RvR: I am currious about this issue. I know in game that there will be light and dark points to gain, lose. If you are a Jedi Knight, but kill everyone and everything to turn to the dark side. Are you still on the light side? Or will you become a part of the dark side and fight against other Jedi? IF you are a Sith, can you do only good and turn to the light side and fight with them?
There's the Sith Empire and the Republic. They've said at LAUNCH there's no plan to switch sides. A Dark Jedi will use vile methods to protect the Republic (which in many ways makes more sense then switching sides). A Light Sith Warrior will try to reform the Sith Empire (and probably there will be people there that will try to kill him).
In the future, who knows? Perhaps there will be intra-faction PvP with Dark vs. Light as well as inter-faction. Perhaps there will also be side-switching.
RvR: I am currious about this issue. I know in game that there will be light and dark points to gain, lose. If you are a Jedi Knight, but kill everyone and everything to turn to the dark side. Are you still on the light side? Or will you become a part of the dark side and fight against other Jedi? IF you are a Sith, can you do only good and turn to the light side and fight with them?
There's the Sith Empire and the Republic. They've said at LAUNCH there's no plan to switch sides. A Dark Jedi will use vile methods to protect the Republic (which in many ways makes more sense then switching sides). A Light Sith Warrior will try to reform the Sith Empire (and probably there will be people there that will try to kill him).
In the future, who knows? Perhaps there will be intra-faction PvP with Dark vs. Light as well as inter-faction. Perhaps there will also be side-switching.
That makes more sense. Thanks for clearing it up for me. It seems strange that you can try to defend the Republic through vile methods. Or a sith that wants to reform anything through light side powers. So it will end up a streight RvR regardless of allignment. I guess it will be easier for the programs with PvP balancing.
It would be nice in the future to offer a story arc to switch sides. But content will be much more important for launch.
How many people long for that "past, simpler, and better world," I wonder, without ever recognizing the truth that perhaps it was they who were simpler and better, and not the world about them? R.A.Salvatore
For me, it's simple - has BioWare ever released a game that flop? No. I mean just look at their past two releases Dragon Age of Origins and Mass Effect 2 - HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE hits! Saying BioWare will flop with Star Wars is like saying Michael Jordan will miss a game-winning free throw. Not gonna happen.
Well it is possible they will fall short in the MMORPG market, but I doubt it.
Bioware has proven that they know how to do content, so odds are TOR will be generally recieved as an enjoyable game.
I think it is important to note the difference between the average gamer, and the 'hardcore fan'.
The average gamer only cares about the game being fun. They wont fling their mouse out the window because there is some violation of canon -- most gamers wont even notice most violations of canon, tbh.
I am sure the hardcore fans will find fault with TOR, but the average gamer (basically 90% of their potential customer base) will be more concerned about TOR just being a fun game to play.
I'm still trying to figure out how the OP didn't have a stroke after watching the "cinematic abortion" that was The Phantom Menace.
My word and world holds ground and is real Your word is like floods of poisoned water A language spoken with spit from different tongues More of my unwanted opinions
SWG was a good game. In order to enjoy playing it you had to be intelligent and figure out how the bonuses from the various classes stacked. That was what made it good. Instead of having a single suite of abilities with some optional "specializations" that are only tweaks on abilities you already have, you actually had real flexibility in designing who your character was and how they operated. That is what we miss. Every other game out there specifically pigeon holes you into one class and that class develops as you go. In SWG you could master two elite professions or pick up specific skill trees from different professions to create your own unique character. Until the dark times, until the NGE lol. I have tried WoW, LOTRO, AoC, Everquest II, and WAR. None of those MMOs offer that level of character flexibility, and I haven't seen or heard of any others that do (and if anybody knows of any please let me know). I'm interested in SWTOR because Bioware tells great stories and I like Star Wars and KOTOR and KOTOR II.
You did not address any of the points I made. You ignored everything I said up until the game not being good. Instead you offered your opinion about how you liked to group with other people who enjoyed the terrible game, and how you enjoyed the awful class balance. I've figured out why I hate SWG refugees so much THEY ALL ARGUE LIKE CREATIONISTS. Ignoring the facts and reason just covering their eyes and ears screaming "DOES NOT!!!"....
There is a simple reason for that: I valued the class flexibility enough to tolerate the rest. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying you missed the point. The only point I was making, and the only one that mattered to me as I played the game, was that I had a ton of flexibility in designing and speccing my character. Yes, the classes were poorly balanced, that was why the combat upgrade happened. Because of the flexibility of the classes none of us who enjoyed the game at that time cared. That is what you're missing, and failing to understand, and finding so frustrating. I'm not a creationist, I'm a control freak lol. I want my character to be mine. And that was how everyone who stuck with the game through the CU and then left after the NGE felt. There were plenty of other irritating issues as well, but the one I found that struck a chord with everyone I knew and talked to was that the class system was transformed into something horrible, inane, and incredibly stupid. We were willing to put up with the other crap in order to have access to such a flexible character class system. Once that went away, so did we.
Liking an aspect of the game does not make it a good game. I liked the classes and the community in Earth and Beyond and it was still a bad game with a complete lack of pvp, inflated economy, and inefficient when it came to the leveling system. Not to mention what happened when EA secretly decided they were killing it and the devs wouldn't even communicate that decision for months after. If a game has many gaping holes it is a BAD game. People need to stop with the nostalgia and move forward.
Seeing posts from people claiming it was the greatest game ever made makes me vomit in my mouth a little bit.
My word and world holds ground and is real Your word is like floods of poisoned water A language spoken with spit from different tongues More of my unwanted opinions
The best way I see to go about the whole grouping conundrum is to have an entire storyline built around the group experience and keep the class stuff as a solo experience.
I seem to have fallen into this magical fantasy land where SWG wasn't losing tons of subscribers before they even thought about the CU or NGE that these pseudointellectuals live in. Read some of the dev blogs and attempt to get over yourselves.
Thats usually what happens in sandbox games when content dries up.. And seriously, what content other than unlocking a jedi and doing pvp was there in SWG.. Hmm not too much only one of the best crafting systems ever designed... Space was added later.. A player economy driven completely by the crafters was pretty awesome stuff.. So they were losing subs... Is that any reason to change the mechanics of the combat system and class system? They lost subs for a completely different reason, and all signs point to a severe lack of quests and content in general. I can tell you never played the game seriously enough to see its faults and flaws.
Oh ya, lets not forget WoW and eq2 both came out in nov 2004.. Pretty much at the point swg subs started falling off.. And why did they fall off? NEw game engines, new worlds loaded with quests and content.. No other reason.. SWG combat and class system should have never been touched..
You SWG refugees are a delusional bunch. Played on Corbantis(iirc) for the first six months as a carbineer(sure loved killing myself because of the retarded HAM bar...)
Retarded HAM bar or retarded player? ARE you serious? Come on man, they were called buffs... You played the game six months and never buffed so killed yourself?
and only stuck around so long because I was a SW fanboy. From the onset the class balance, lack of content, and combat were terrible.
Thats simply your opinion.. Some of us learned to adapt to the balance issues.. Others learned that there was always one class that could beat another no matter what..
Why would you force somebody to either sit in front of a dancing idiot or find another player to allow you to go back to hunting? That was a dreadfully awful idea.
Sorry but its called socializing.. Something that is seriously lacking in every game out there.. So big deal you went into a cantina, tipped a dancer and sat there for 5-10 minutes.. This was a hub for pvp activity and I found alot of imperials to group up with and kill/pvp fast and easily because certain cities had been known as gathering hubs. You goto a game like EQ2 and theres is no gathering hub.. Oh wow, theres 3 people standing around a broker afk..
Crafter based economy where prices got out of control much like they are currently in Eve. I suppose that's a one of the major flaws of those types of systems. Run to this spot on the map, kill the spawned mobs, and return or take the role of a UPS employee were about the only missions I ended up suffering through.
If you read what I wrote I did say there was a severe lack of content.. But in the end those missions were simply a way to make credits to buy gear and you needed to grind/kill things anyways to level.. So it was win win imo..
I'm so sick of you guys pretending it was such a fantastic game.
IT was a great concept and design, and the wow kids like you helped kill it..
There were some good aspects but overall it was bad, and people need to drop the "Old Girlfriend Syndrome". I can't believe so many people enjoyed spending their time trying to fill their houses with useless crap. I mean you are defending a sci-fi Sims Online where it was more of a job than a game.
It was just another facet to a multi-faceted game design. Yes you did need better than 80 I.Q to play and figure it out..
Should I even bring up the fact that entire classes were incomplete at launch?
What MMO isn't complete at launch.. I assume you're referring to jedi.. Big deal no one unlocked them right away anyways..
I had some fun while playing this game, but claiming it was a gift from the Gods to the MMO genre is provably wrong. Stop living in denial SWG refugees.
Again you're entitled to an opinion.. but thats about all it is. You have zero clue about how an mmo should work or what fun might be.. All you have is your dictated blizzard cookie cutter 6 classes in the whole game pos game.. Yes wow fkn sucks.. You wanted to know what games don't have a trinity? Star Wars Galaxies PRE CU!!
Retarded HAM bar or retarded player? ARE you serious? Come on man, they were called buffs... You played the game six months and never buffed so killed yourself?
So it's the player's fault because the carbineer motto was somthing along the lines of "Killing ourselves so you don't have to" and that in reality if you didn't have another player babysitting you while hunting you'd do far more damage to yourself than to your intended target? How about when the Commandos didn't actually advance when using their skills? Crafting classes missing key reagents... Got milk?
Thats simply your opinion.. Some of us learned to adapt to the balance issues.. Others learned that there was always one class that could beat another no matter what..
You are beyond dense... It's like the idiot MAX users at the start of Planetside claiming that if we didn't like how strong MAX units were we should all re-cert to MAX's or get in a tank. Naturally you learned to avoid the weak classes and play the better ones congratulations on being as good at mmo's as your average mouth-breathing, 12-year-old, Rogue in Vanilla WoW.
Sorry but its called socializing.. Something that is seriously lacking in every game out there.. So big deal you went into a cantina, tipped a dancer and sat there for 5-10 minutes.. This was a hub for pvp activity and I found alot of imperials to group up with and kill/pvp fast and easily because certain cities had been known as gathering hubs. You goto a game like EQ2 and theres is no gathering hub.. Oh wow, theres 3 people standing around a broker afk..
Actually, socializing is where you leave your parent's basement, get in a car, and go hang out with real people in the real world. Why am I paying to sit in a virtual bar watching a sprite dance around me so I can regenerate enough to actually play the game. People who enjoyed that were sad excuses for human beings.
If you read what I wrote I did say there was a severe lack of content.. But in the end those missions were simply a way to make credits to buy gear and you needed to grind/kill things anyways to level.. So it was win win imo..
So in your opinion the fact that there was NO diversity in these quests, insane travel distances, and crap rewards is a win-win scenario? I'm going to go ahead and chalk that one up to insanity.
It was just another facet to a multi-faceted game design. Yes you did need better than 80 I.Q to play and figure it out..
Thanks for confirming my point about the pseudo-intellectualism. Everybody who quit SWG before the CU and NGE were idiots! They were all children! The developers who created your game who admitted it was bad were morons too! Playing "Virtual Barbie" where I could be a musician with a lovely house was marketing genius. I've actually found the game you guys are looking for it's called Second Life. Hell, all you'd need to do is find a Star Wars mod for it and you could relive classic PRE-CU/NGE SWG!
What MMO isn't complete at launch.. I assume you're referring to jedi.. Big deal no one unlocked them right away anyways..
As I mentioned before.... Commandos, Carbineers, a few crafting classes(scroll up and see the "Got Milk" comment). Of the crafting classes that did work at the start the items they made were utterly useless.
Again you're entitled to an opinion.. but thats about all it is. You have zero clue about how an mmo should work or what fun might be.. All you have is your dictated blizzard cookie cutter 6 classes in the whole game pos game.. Yes wow fkn sucks.. You wanted to know what games don't have a trinity? Star Wars Galaxies PRE CU!!
Being that my opinion is based on facts which can be backed up with subscribing population vs sales, issues that you yourself admitted(even if you skipped over them), forcing myself to play the game in the hopes that I could forgive all the other crap about it, developer blogs about the game's state... I think I can safely say that not only are you wrong and too nostalgic for a game that was never good, but also you're smoking something if you think the boys over at Bioware would be stupid enough to doom their game from the start by making it anything like that horribly executed, incomplete, unbalanced, "empty parking lot" game.
Good day, sir.
My word and world holds ground and is real Your word is like floods of poisoned water A language spoken with spit from different tongues More of my unwanted opinions
"Watching the main character yank a Star Destroyer out of the sky using The Force really sealed the deal for me never wanting to touch the game."
Better get used to it if you plan on playing Biowares' game ( I don't, by the way ). Remember Bastilas' "Battle Meditation" that could take out entire friggin' fleets? lol
I found article, while written, to be silly. Here is an excellent example of too much knowledge being a bad thing.
Example: of course they made more than 2 of the 8 classes force users. Why? Because that's what many players are going to want to do! It makes sense to sacrifice lore in terms of gameplay, because it'll attract more players than being strictly adherent to story. Of course it will be mostly a single-player experience; that is the trend of MMOs today and it's what will bring in the most dollars.
More dollars means more development which is good for all players.
Look, I get that you're dedicated. I was outraged when I saw Spiderman using organic web-shooters. But the decisions make sense and your concerns are frivolous, in the sense that they will not detract from the game except for possibly encyclopedic-knowledged fans like yourself.
Very interesting article, and pretty nitt-picky analysis.
As stated in some answers already, it is the sacrifice we will have to accept - with the funds being pumped in, Bioware wants to make sure they keep most of the people after the first months and for that the masses are necessary. Original trilogy for the old-timer die-hard SW fans, and the newish clone-wars style for the younger SW generation.
Sigh, I would so like to have the mentioned non-exisitng third-faction to enjoy e.g. bounty hunter or smuggler. Skillbased please! then I could decide on the way if I want to go for healer, nuker, or whatever. But I guess it won't be happening and I will end up playing a glow-stick wielder......
"Watching the main character yank a Star Destroyer out of the sky using The Force really sealed the deal for me never wanting to touch the game." Better get used to it if you plan on playing Biowares' game ( I don't, by the way ). Remember Bastilas' "Battle Meditation" that could take out entire friggin' fleets? lol
All Battle meditation did was increase the morale and focus of an army. It didn't make things explode or fly around or magically make blasters do more damage or anything (from a lore perspective anyway, it may added an extra +1 to attack gameplay wise representing the morale boost or something I'm not sure).
I'm in the British Army so I can tell you from first-hand experience how important Morale is in a conflict.
i hear this voice in my head when i hear/read the words "The old Republic"....it keeps saying "Fail". funny, because i heard the same thing when i would read/hear the words "star Trek online". strange....
Bioware wont rush this game to meet an unrealistic launch date like Cryptic did. Also it should be noted that Bioware and Cryptic have different track records. Let's all make snap judgments before the game hits beta. Bang-up job on condemning the boys for trying to make a game that'd attract subscribers beyond people who go to Star Wars conventions.
My word and world holds ground and is real Your word is like floods of poisoned water A language spoken with spit from different tongues More of my unwanted opinions
When i first heard about the game i got excited to have an MMO with possibly a much higher immersion than what we currently have on the table. Common sense soon set in. Bioware are an outstanding company and they know how to tell a story, if i can get enjoyment out of TOR like i do out of their single player games for even only a month or two then it will be money well spent. If they really pull the hat out of the bag and make something i can see myself in for a year or more then fantastic, either way as long as i gain a new gaming experience from it i'll be happy. I doubt very much they'll fail completely.
for a "Star Wars geek" he gets one point flat out wrong:
"Sure, I’ve got some nitpicks, such as calling the warrior Jedi class the Jedi Knight (which is a rank) as opposed to the Jedi Guardian, which would be more appropriate."
No it wouldn't. Canoninicly, the Guardian was never a school until KOTOR, and even then it only existed in the p&p RPG. Consular and Knight were BOTH ranks of the Jedi Order (Consulars being a rank in the diplomatic arm, Knights a rank in the soldier/peacekeeper arm). To quote ProfessorWalsh (apparent guru on the SWTOR official forums):
"In the lore there was a rank known as Consular. There never was a Guardian. The fact is they aren't classes anymore, heck the Consular tree has nothing to do with using the Force offensively it is all about diplomacy.
So you are championing a change to Guardian because of what? It was in KotOR? It used to be a class in the old RPG?
It isn't in the lore. It isn't a class in the RPG. It simply doesn't need to be named Guardian."
====
"Outside of some of the minutiae that made Dark Age of Camelot’s RvR better than Warhammer Online’s, what was one key departure that turned out to make all the difference in WAR’s experience being far inferior? The lack of a third faction! If BioWare means to have any sort of meaningful RvR offerings in The Old Republic, it will be quite challenging with only two factions."
I will agree that a third faction would be a nice alternative. However, anyone who played Dark Age of Camelot for any extended period of time remembers how Mythic struggled keeping all three balanced, never achieving true harmony. It was still the most fun PvP I've ever had in a game, but the constant swings in the population to FOTM realms made our collective heads hurt.
SWG promised three factions at launch. What we got was a Hutt theme park instead of a promised smuggler faction. I'd rather them make two factions really fun than not deliver on a third. Hell, I'll be happy if they can balance the two and not make monumental class changes every patch, forcing me to relearn how to play (I'm looking at YOU Blizzard!).
Loved the article because it had all the same fears I have. When they announced the two more force using classes, a little bit of me died inside. With only 8 classes at launch, why put in 4 force users this early? If they waited until an expansion the counselor, and sith lord would have made a lot more sense instead of having the 4 force users at the beginning. Dividing them up really only gives players fewer options in the game, and MMORPG's are all about options! So basically if you don't want to play a force user, you only have 4 options, that is very few in an MMO, with not a lot of replay ability.
Of course we still don't really know how everything is supposed to work, only that it is a story driven game, no idea on the group mechanics, if there are even going to be any. No idea on how freely we will be able to explore, if at all without the confines of the story. Heck we still don't know if we can actually choose between different races, all we have seen from a play ability sense is humans, we have seen other races true, but for all we know that is just for the little npc's we get to take with us(forget what they are called atm). And that is another thing that currently concern's me because they have made no mention of play ability for different races! We can only hope.
And let's not forget what makes star wars, well star wars! Space, space exploration, space combat ect. We have no clue about that! Also would have loved it if they put in your idea of a third neutral faction, would have made the game even more star wars, but at every turn(no matter how excited I was at the beginning) they seem to be going down a road that doesn't seem to translate well into an MMORPG, and that concerns me most of all!
I think the article is a little over the top and silly for this early stage of development. Also this story takes place in a time when Jedi and Sith flourished. Their are something like 20 different kind of Jedi, Two Jedi classes allow for 4 different type of Jedi over just two. Same can be said for the Sith. Look at it this way. You have a gun weilding Trooper. Why would you need another class that has a gun? Because the Smuggler will play different and have it's own unique rolls.
Jedi Warrior could be a Guardian or a Jedi Shadow-Knight (hunted sith) Investigator. All would be something made by creating a Jedi Warrior.
Jedi Consular could be a Healer, Advisor, Diplomat or a Mystic. All could be made by rolling a Consular. Very different aspects of the Jedi. Again same could be said about the sith. This game is the first to address this over all generic "Jedi"
Also picking on things like armor and how the use of duel-bladed lightsaber works, really show that the writer has not read many of the Star Wars books or has forgotten the content. Kinda of a poor read. First time a MMORPG article I have read was way off base.
Bioware wont rush this game to meet an unrealistic launch date like Cryptic did. Also it should be noted that Bioware and Cryptic have different track records. Let's all make snap judgments before the game hits beta. Bang-up job on condemning the boys for trying to make a game that'd attract subscribers beyond people who go to Star Wars conventions.
I look forward to your posts a month after release.
Let's be honest with ourselves. STO has issues spawning from jumping dev teams while it was in it's infancy. They were also forced to release months before the product was ready to meet a deadline. I'll be surprised if EA makes the same mistake they did with WAR and rushes another unfinished game. They've already pushed it back twice now and they've been working on it for over 4 years.
My word and world holds ground and is real Your word is like floods of poisoned water A language spoken with spit from different tongues More of my unwanted opinions
After reading the article, I did find the concept of a consular and an inquisitor having a kick-ass double lightsaber odd.
Since they are DPS ranged for their respective talents, maybe a bog standard light saber would be better, with standard and double sided light sabers available to the warrior / knight classes?
There are a couple of things in your article that show an outright lack of knowledge about the game as well as a lack of knowledge regarding a few pieces of Star Wars lore.
Namely your concern over double bladed lightsabers and the name of the jedi classes.
Warriors as well we Knights will be able to use double bladed lightsabers...this has been clarified in several articles on the website's forums.
The Jedi "guardian" class is actually a very recent and subjective piece of canon. It was actually created by the Star Wars roleplaying game and later canonized by its inclusion in The Essential Guide to the Force.. So really, it's not so much of a misstep by Bioware as it is a choice that could have to do with story mechanics. A Jedi Knight in the game can choose to specialize as a Jedi sentinel would, therefore it wouldn't make sense to call him a Jedi Guardian. Giving the class a rank name means that there is a possibility within the story of becoming a jedi master with some other sort of specialization. If anything, you should be excited about this possibility, not angry that they got a class name wrong.
For the record, I too abhor the idea that Darth maul was a Sith inquisitor (that's what they are trying to shell on their website) and think that double bladed lightsabers should be limited to melee combat classes. Your theory on the "mage staff" thing might hold some ground..it's unfortunate that they would do that in order to fill an analogous role instead of doing what makes the most sense. The double bladed lightsaber is a melee weapon, not a freaking magical staff.
Your argument is like a two legged dog with an eating disorder...weak and unbalanced.
Comments
There's the Sith Empire and the Republic. They've said at LAUNCH there's no plan to switch sides. A Dark Jedi will use vile methods to protect the Republic (which in many ways makes more sense then switching sides). A Light Sith Warrior will try to reform the Sith Empire (and probably there will be people there that will try to kill him).
In the future, who knows? Perhaps there will be intra-faction PvP with Dark vs. Light as well as inter-faction. Perhaps there will also be side-switching.
There's the Sith Empire and the Republic. They've said at LAUNCH there's no plan to switch sides. A Dark Jedi will use vile methods to protect the Republic (which in many ways makes more sense then switching sides). A Light Sith Warrior will try to reform the Sith Empire (and probably there will be people there that will try to kill him).
In the future, who knows? Perhaps there will be intra-faction PvP with Dark vs. Light as well as inter-faction. Perhaps there will also be side-switching.
That makes more sense. Thanks for clearing it up for me. It seems strange that you can try to defend the Republic through vile methods. Or a sith that wants to reform anything through light side powers. So it will end up a streight RvR regardless of allignment. I guess it will be easier for the programs with PvP balancing.
It would be nice in the future to offer a story arc to switch sides. But content will be much more important for launch.
How many people long for that "past, simpler, and better world," I wonder, without ever recognizing the truth that perhaps it was they who were simpler and better, and not the world about them?
R.A.Salvatore
Well it is possible they will fall short in the MMORPG market, but I doubt it.
Bioware has proven that they know how to do content, so odds are TOR will be generally recieved as an enjoyable game.
I think it is important to note the difference between the average gamer, and the 'hardcore fan'.
The average gamer only cares about the game being fun. They wont fling their mouse out the window because there is some violation of canon -- most gamers wont even notice most violations of canon, tbh.
I am sure the hardcore fans will find fault with TOR, but the average gamer (basically 90% of their potential customer base) will be more concerned about TOR just being a fun game to play.
I'm still trying to figure out how the OP didn't have a stroke after watching the "cinematic abortion" that was The Phantom Menace.
My word and world holds ground and is real
Your word is like floods of poisoned water
A language spoken with spit from different tongues
More of my unwanted opinions
You did not address any of the points I made. You ignored everything I said up until the game not being good. Instead you offered your opinion about how you liked to group with other people who enjoyed the terrible game, and how you enjoyed the awful class balance. I've figured out why I hate SWG refugees so much THEY ALL ARGUE LIKE CREATIONISTS. Ignoring the facts and reason just covering their eyes and ears screaming "DOES NOT!!!"....
There is a simple reason for that: I valued the class flexibility enough to tolerate the rest. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying you missed the point. The only point I was making, and the only one that mattered to me as I played the game, was that I had a ton of flexibility in designing and speccing my character. Yes, the classes were poorly balanced, that was why the combat upgrade happened. Because of the flexibility of the classes none of us who enjoyed the game at that time cared. That is what you're missing, and failing to understand, and finding so frustrating. I'm not a creationist, I'm a control freak lol. I want my character to be mine. And that was how everyone who stuck with the game through the CU and then left after the NGE felt. There were plenty of other irritating issues as well, but the one I found that struck a chord with everyone I knew and talked to was that the class system was transformed into something horrible, inane, and incredibly stupid. We were willing to put up with the other crap in order to have access to such a flexible character class system. Once that went away, so did we.
Liking an aspect of the game does not make it a good game. I liked the classes and the community in Earth and Beyond and it was still a bad game with a complete lack of pvp, inflated economy, and inefficient when it came to the leveling system. Not to mention what happened when EA secretly decided they were killing it and the devs wouldn't even communicate that decision for months after. If a game has many gaping holes it is a BAD game. People need to stop with the nostalgia and move forward.
Seeing posts from people claiming it was the greatest game ever made makes me vomit in my mouth a little bit.
My word and world holds ground and is real
Your word is like floods of poisoned water
A language spoken with spit from different tongues
More of my unwanted opinions
The best way I see to go about the whole grouping conundrum is to have an entire storyline built around the group experience and keep the class stuff as a solo experience.
Theres so many star wars stories out there. I play mmorpg's to make my own.
Thats usually what happens in sandbox games when content dries up.. And seriously, what content other than unlocking a jedi and doing pvp was there in SWG.. Hmm not too much only one of the best crafting systems ever designed... Space was added later.. A player economy driven completely by the crafters was pretty awesome stuff.. So they were losing subs... Is that any reason to change the mechanics of the combat system and class system? They lost subs for a completely different reason, and all signs point to a severe lack of quests and content in general. I can tell you never played the game seriously enough to see its faults and flaws.
Oh ya, lets not forget WoW and eq2 both came out in nov 2004.. Pretty much at the point swg subs started falling off.. And why did they fall off? NEw game engines, new worlds loaded with quests and content.. No other reason.. SWG combat and class system should have never been touched..
You SWG refugees are a delusional bunch. Played on Corbantis(iirc) for the first six months as a carbineer(sure loved killing myself because of the retarded HAM bar...)
Retarded HAM bar or retarded player? ARE you serious? Come on man, they were called buffs... You played the game six months and never buffed so killed yourself?
and only stuck around so long because I was a SW fanboy. From the onset the class balance, lack of content, and combat were terrible.
Thats simply your opinion.. Some of us learned to adapt to the balance issues.. Others learned that there was always one class that could beat another no matter what..
Why would you force somebody to either sit in front of a dancing idiot or find another player to allow you to go back to hunting? That was a dreadfully awful idea.
Sorry but its called socializing.. Something that is seriously lacking in every game out there.. So big deal you went into a cantina, tipped a dancer and sat there for 5-10 minutes.. This was a hub for pvp activity and I found alot of imperials to group up with and kill/pvp fast and easily because certain cities had been known as gathering hubs. You goto a game like EQ2 and theres is no gathering hub.. Oh wow, theres 3 people standing around a broker afk..
Crafter based economy where prices got out of control much like they are currently in Eve. I suppose that's a one of the major flaws of those types of systems. Run to this spot on the map, kill the spawned mobs, and return or take the role of a UPS employee were about the only missions I ended up suffering through.
If you read what I wrote I did say there was a severe lack of content.. But in the end those missions were simply a way to make credits to buy gear and you needed to grind/kill things anyways to level.. So it was win win imo..
I'm so sick of you guys pretending it was such a fantastic game.
IT was a great concept and design, and the wow kids like you helped kill it..
There were some good aspects but overall it was bad, and people need to drop the "Old Girlfriend Syndrome". I can't believe so many people enjoyed spending their time trying to fill their houses with useless crap. I mean you are defending a sci-fi Sims Online where it was more of a job than a game.
It was just another facet to a multi-faceted game design. Yes you did need better than 80 I.Q to play and figure it out..
Should I even bring up the fact that entire classes were incomplete at launch?
What MMO isn't complete at launch.. I assume you're referring to jedi.. Big deal no one unlocked them right away anyways..
I had some fun while playing this game, but claiming it was a gift from the Gods to the MMO genre is provably wrong. Stop living in denial SWG refugees.
Again you're entitled to an opinion.. but thats about all it is. You have zero clue about how an mmo should work or what fun might be.. All you have is your dictated blizzard cookie cutter 6 classes in the whole game pos game.. Yes wow fkn sucks.. You wanted to know what games don't have a trinity? Star Wars Galaxies PRE CU!!
You are beyond dense... It's like the idiot MAX users at the start of Planetside claiming that if we didn't like how strong MAX units were we should all re-cert to MAX's or get in a tank. Naturally you learned to avoid the weak classes and play the better ones congratulations on being as good at mmo's as your average mouth-breathing, 12-year-old, Rogue in Vanilla WoW.
Actually, socializing is where you leave your parent's basement, get in a car, and go hang out with real people in the real world. Why am I paying to sit in a virtual bar watching a sprite dance around me so I can regenerate enough to actually play the game. People who enjoyed that were sad excuses for human beings.
So in your opinion the fact that there was NO diversity in these quests, insane travel distances, and crap rewards is a win-win scenario? I'm going to go ahead and chalk that one up to insanity.
Thanks for confirming my point about the pseudo-intellectualism. Everybody who quit SWG before the CU and NGE were idiots! They were all children! The developers who created your game who admitted it was bad were morons too! Playing "Virtual Barbie" where I could be a musician with a lovely house was marketing genius. I've actually found the game you guys are looking for it's called Second Life. Hell, all you'd need to do is find a Star Wars mod for it and you could relive classic PRE-CU/NGE SWG!
As I mentioned before.... Commandos, Carbineers, a few crafting classes(scroll up and see the "Got Milk" comment). Of the crafting classes that did work at the start the items they made were utterly useless.Being that my opinion is based on facts which can be backed up with subscribing population vs sales, issues that you yourself admitted(even if you skipped over them), forcing myself to play the game in the hopes that I could forgive all the other crap about it, developer blogs about the game's state... I think I can safely say that not only are you wrong and too nostalgic for a game that was never good, but also you're smoking something if you think the boys over at Bioware would be stupid enough to doom their game from the start by making it anything like that horribly executed, incomplete, unbalanced, "empty parking lot" game.
Good day, sir.
My word and world holds ground and is real
Your word is like floods of poisoned water
A language spoken with spit from different tongues
More of my unwanted opinions
Hurm... so much anger there is about something that not even here is. XD
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
"Watching the main character yank a Star Destroyer out of the sky using The Force really sealed the deal for me never wanting to touch the game."
Better get used to it if you plan on playing Biowares' game ( I don't, by the way ). Remember Bastilas' "Battle Meditation" that could take out entire friggin' fleets? lol
I found article, while written, to be silly. Here is an excellent example of too much knowledge being a bad thing.
Example: of course they made more than 2 of the 8 classes force users. Why? Because that's what many players are going to want to do! It makes sense to sacrifice lore in terms of gameplay, because it'll attract more players than being strictly adherent to story. Of course it will be mostly a single-player experience; that is the trend of MMOs today and it's what will bring in the most dollars.
More dollars means more development which is good for all players.
Look, I get that you're dedicated. I was outraged when I saw Spiderman using organic web-shooters. But the decisions make sense and your concerns are frivolous, in the sense that they will not detract from the game except for possibly encyclopedic-knowledged fans like yourself.
Very interesting article, and pretty nitt-picky analysis.
As stated in some answers already, it is the sacrifice we will have to accept - with the funds being pumped in, Bioware wants to make sure they keep most of the people after the first months and for that the masses are necessary. Original trilogy for the old-timer die-hard SW fans, and the newish clone-wars style for the younger SW generation.
Sigh, I would so like to have the mentioned non-exisitng third-faction to enjoy e.g. bounty hunter or smuggler. Skillbased please! then I could decide on the way if I want to go for healer, nuker, or whatever. But I guess it won't be happening and I will end up playing a glow-stick wielder......
*shrugs*
All Battle meditation did was increase the morale and focus of an army. It didn't make things explode or fly around or magically make blasters do more damage or anything (from a lore perspective anyway, it may added an extra +1 to attack gameplay wise representing the morale boost or something I'm not sure).
I'm in the British Army so I can tell you from first-hand experience how important Morale is in a conflict.
i hear this voice in my head when i hear/read the words "The old Republic"....it keeps saying "Fail". funny, because i heard the same thing when i would read/hear the words "star Trek online". strange....
Bioware wont rush this game to meet an unrealistic launch date like Cryptic did. Also it should be noted that Bioware and Cryptic have different track records. Let's all make snap judgments before the game hits beta. Bang-up job on condemning the boys for trying to make a game that'd attract subscribers beyond people who go to Star Wars conventions.
My word and world holds ground and is real
Your word is like floods of poisoned water
A language spoken with spit from different tongues
More of my unwanted opinions
When i first heard about the game i got excited to have an MMO with possibly a much higher immersion than what we currently have on the table. Common sense soon set in. Bioware are an outstanding company and they know how to tell a story, if i can get enjoyment out of TOR like i do out of their single player games for even only a month or two then it will be money well spent. If they really pull the hat out of the bag and make something i can see myself in for a year or more then fantastic, either way as long as i gain a new gaming experience from it i'll be happy. I doubt very much they'll fail completely.
for a "Star Wars geek" he gets one point flat out wrong:
"Sure, I’ve got some nitpicks, such as calling the warrior Jedi class the Jedi Knight (which is a rank) as opposed to the Jedi Guardian, which would be more appropriate."
No it wouldn't. Canoninicly, the Guardian was never a school until KOTOR, and even then it only existed in the p&p RPG. Consular and Knight were BOTH ranks of the Jedi Order (Consulars being a rank in the diplomatic arm, Knights a rank in the soldier/peacekeeper arm). To quote ProfessorWalsh (apparent guru on the SWTOR official forums):
"In the lore there was a rank known as Consular. There never was a Guardian. The fact is they aren't classes anymore, heck the Consular tree has nothing to do with using the Force offensively it is all about diplomacy.
So you are championing a change to Guardian because of what? It was in KotOR? It used to be a class in the old RPG?
It isn't in the lore. It isn't a class in the RPG. It simply doesn't need to be named Guardian."
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"Outside of some of the minutiae that made Dark Age of Camelot’s RvR better than Warhammer Online’s, what was one key departure that turned out to make all the difference in WAR’s experience being far inferior? The lack of a third faction! If BioWare means to have any sort of meaningful RvR offerings in The Old Republic, it will be quite challenging with only two factions."
I will agree that a third faction would be a nice alternative. However, anyone who played Dark Age of Camelot for any extended period of time remembers how Mythic struggled keeping all three balanced, never achieving true harmony. It was still the most fun PvP I've ever had in a game, but the constant swings in the population to FOTM realms made our collective heads hurt.
SWG promised three factions at launch. What we got was a Hutt theme park instead of a promised smuggler faction. I'd rather them make two factions really fun than not deliver on a third. Hell, I'll be happy if they can balance the two and not make monumental class changes every patch, forcing me to relearn how to play (I'm looking at YOU Blizzard!).
Loved the article because it had all the same fears I have. When they announced the two more force using classes, a little bit of me died inside. With only 8 classes at launch, why put in 4 force users this early? If they waited until an expansion the counselor, and sith lord would have made a lot more sense instead of having the 4 force users at the beginning. Dividing them up really only gives players fewer options in the game, and MMORPG's are all about options! So basically if you don't want to play a force user, you only have 4 options, that is very few in an MMO, with not a lot of replay ability.
Of course we still don't really know how everything is supposed to work, only that it is a story driven game, no idea on the group mechanics, if there are even going to be any. No idea on how freely we will be able to explore, if at all without the confines of the story. Heck we still don't know if we can actually choose between different races, all we have seen from a play ability sense is humans, we have seen other races true, but for all we know that is just for the little npc's we get to take with us(forget what they are called atm). And that is another thing that currently concern's me because they have made no mention of play ability for different races! We can only hope.
And let's not forget what makes star wars, well star wars! Space, space exploration, space combat ect. We have no clue about that! Also would have loved it if they put in your idea of a third neutral faction, would have made the game even more star wars, but at every turn(no matter how excited I was at the beginning) they seem to be going down a road that doesn't seem to translate well into an MMORPG, and that concerns me most of all!
I think the article is a little over the top and silly for this early stage of development. Also this story takes place in a time when Jedi and Sith flourished. Their are something like 20 different kind of Jedi, Two Jedi classes allow for 4 different type of Jedi over just two. Same can be said for the Sith. Look at it this way. You have a gun weilding Trooper. Why would you need another class that has a gun? Because the Smuggler will play different and have it's own unique rolls.
Jedi Warrior could be a Guardian or a Jedi Shadow-Knight (hunted sith) Investigator. All would be something made by creating a Jedi Warrior.
Jedi Consular could be a Healer, Advisor, Diplomat or a Mystic. All could be made by rolling a Consular. Very different aspects of the Jedi. Again same could be said about the sith. This game is the first to address this over all generic "Jedi"
Also picking on things like armor and how the use of duel-bladed lightsaber works, really show that the writer has not read many of the Star Wars books or has forgotten the content. Kinda of a poor read. First time a MMORPG article I have read was way off base.
I look forward to your posts a month after release.
Let's be honest with ourselves. STO has issues spawning from jumping dev teams while it was in it's infancy. They were also forced to release months before the product was ready to meet a deadline. I'll be surprised if EA makes the same mistake they did with WAR and rushes another unfinished game. They've already pushed it back twice now and they've been working on it for over 4 years.
My word and world holds ground and is real
Your word is like floods of poisoned water
A language spoken with spit from different tongues
More of my unwanted opinions
After reading the article, I did find the concept of a consular and an inquisitor having a kick-ass double lightsaber odd.
Since they are DPS ranged for their respective talents, maybe a bog standard light saber would be better, with standard and double sided light sabers available to the warrior / knight classes?
There are a couple of things in your article that show an outright lack of knowledge about the game as well as a lack of knowledge regarding a few pieces of Star Wars lore.
Namely your concern over double bladed lightsabers and the name of the jedi classes.
Warriors as well we Knights will be able to use double bladed lightsabers...this has been clarified in several articles on the website's forums.
The Jedi "guardian" class is actually a very recent and subjective piece of canon. It was actually created by the Star Wars roleplaying game and later canonized by its inclusion in The Essential Guide to the Force.. So really, it's not so much of a misstep by Bioware as it is a choice that could have to do with story mechanics. A Jedi Knight in the game can choose to specialize as a Jedi sentinel would, therefore it wouldn't make sense to call him a Jedi Guardian. Giving the class a rank name means that there is a possibility within the story of becoming a jedi master with some other sort of specialization. If anything, you should be excited about this possibility, not angry that they got a class name wrong.
For the record, I too abhor the idea that Darth maul was a Sith inquisitor (that's what they are trying to shell on their website) and think that double bladed lightsabers should be limited to melee combat classes. Your theory on the "mage staff" thing might hold some ground..it's unfortunate that they would do that in order to fill an analogous role instead of doing what makes the most sense. The double bladed lightsaber is a melee weapon, not a freaking magical staff.
Your argument is like a two legged dog with an eating disorder...weak and unbalanced.