Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG

[Krafus]

Werthead;

I dearly hope you're right about Bioware being able to tell Lucasarts "Fuck off, we'll release this game when we're damn good and ready." Even if I ultimately decide not to buy the game, I don't want Bioware to have a blemish on its record. At least this time there's no upcoming Star Wars movie that would make Lucasarts want to rush the game out in time for the Christmas preceding that movie...

Those 'microtransactions' you mention make me wary. If players have to pay to perform or just participate in one, then it's just another way to siphon money. And if it turns out that a paying microtransactions system is all but unavoidable if one wants to enjoy the game to the fullest (like for obtaining the most powerful items)... well, a duck of a different color is still a duck.

The Humble Asskicker;

The sacrifice of good storytelling for the interaction with leet-speaking anthropomorphic cocks is not something that should be celebrated.

:lol: True... And you've reminded me of another aspect I'm wondering about concerning TOR, the storytelling. One of the reasons I liked KoToR so much is that, for me at least, its story and the setting as a whole provided fantastic immersion in the Galaxy Far Far Away. Exploring the various planets in the game for the first time made me feel every bit as happy as I was the first several times I watched the original movie trilogy. Of everything Lucasarts and other licensed companies have produced since then, only The Thrawn Trilogy has matched that feat (and Lucas's own prequel trilogy certainly didn't).

I realize that a storyline of the length and depth of KoToR's in a MMORPG is too much to hope for, but it and the NPCs had better be more than just means to distribute quests, information about quests, and/or provide various services to players.

[Slurktan]

The trailer is certainly visually stunning and Bioware has decent track record for storytelling but they seriously are lazy when it comes to the models for the graphics. This is supposed to be set what 3500 years or so before Phantom Menace but yet all the technology looks exactly the same as the later period and the ship that bursts into the Academy looks damn near exactly and sounds exactly like a Republic Gunship? Are you kidding? Can't they, you know make something up without having to steal from the movies?

Seriously? Why the fuck not set the game closer to the movies timewise so that is at least somewhat understandable? There's lots of stuff before Darth Bane that could be suitable; or they could even go the new Star Trek route and just have another timeline altogether. But no the same lazyness, lets make everything look just like the movies with slight little variations because it's older!

[Krafus]

Slurktan:

The KoToR games had already pretty much established that, implausible as it might be, technology was about as advanced in that time period as it was in the movies, so I can't fault Bioware for following a pattern they've previously established.

However, replicating the Jedi Temple and using a near clone of the Republic gunship... Yeah, I can see your point there. My guess would be that Bioware wanted to use imagery that would be familiar to people who have only seen the movies - the same way that this trailer is meant to raise excitement and anticipation about the game, even if actual graphics and gameplay bear no resemblance to it.

[Rhom]

The heroes of the movies use swords for chrissakes and you're complaining that technology isn't advancing?!!?

[Werthead]

However, replicating the Jedi Temple and using a near clone of the Republic gunship... Yeah, I can see your point there. My guess would be that Bioware wanted to use imagery that would be familiar to people who have only seen the movies - the same way that this trailer is meant to raise excitement and anticipation about the game, even if actual graphics and gameplay bear no resemblance to it.

The Jedi Temple is over 4,000 years old and it is physically the same building that appears in the KotOR era and the movies. So obviously it would look the same.

As for the rest, technology advances very, very slowly in the Star Wars universe for reasons that are never adequately explained (the Force did it). Didn't KotOR have Ion Technology as a really big deal but it wasn't implemented on a large scale until the TIE Fighters were built four millennia later?

[Frank Stark]

This is the first time I've heard that Bioware is considering not using a monthly subscription model. That free-to-play is even in the conversation gives me some hope. Though, as others have said, if it's just replaced by some awful pay-per-transaction model, that's just as bad. I would be willing to pay for each "chapter" release. I did read in an interview that the uber-plan was to have this game be Kotor 3, 4, 5 and so on. If the storyline content falls out that way, I'd pay for each, just like I paid for both Kotor and Kotor 2 (even though 2 was only 2/3s of a cool game).

I certainly echo the earlier lamentation that MMORPGs give up storytelling for the "reward" of playing with online dicks in order to get anything done. For me, the ideal situation is one where we can play the storyline alone if we so desire, or coop with a small group of friends, ones I know from some other medium. The large team forming should be left strictly to PvP areas. You know, where they'd battle to see which faction controls which planet and whatever and talk trash in leet-speak. I would even go to the PvP areas sometimes, I just wouldn't want to be forced there.

I also spent some time lurking on the official TOR forums. I was dismayed to see how many people get excited about "crafting" and how they hoped there'd be a lot of crafting in TOR. Can an MMO regular here explain this to me? My real-life is software "crafting"... the last thing I want from a video game is more work. I want to be a f-ing hero, dammit! Maybe I misunderstand the term (quite possible), I assume that there will be some level of weapon/armor upgrading based on found or purchased upgrades, but I do NOT want to spend my character's exp leveling up in "metalworking" just so I can have decent armor.

[Krafus]

The Jedi Temple is over 4,000 years old and it is physically the same building that appears in the KotOR era and the movies. So obviously it would look the same.

Alright, then... but still, it is a bit disconcerting to see a structure look exactly the same as it will appear 4,000 years later. At least Tatooine was a just a small, struggling colony in KotOR (with, IIRC, one NPC even mentioning he believed it would soon fail).

As for the rest, technology advances very, very slowly in the Star Wars universe for reasons that are never adequately explained (the Force did it). Didn't KotOR have Ion Technology as a really big deal but it wasn't implemented on a large scale until the TIE Fighters were built four millennia later?

Something I've found rather funny in the expanded universe is that military technology apparently starts progressing again quite quickly after the Empire's defeat; IIRC, as of the start of the Vong invasion, capital warships and even starfighters were substantially improved, performance-wise, over their civil war (read: original movie trilogy) counterparts. This seems like natural technological progress like we've known here over the last century, but it begs the question of why did technology apparently all but stagnate for an incredible 4,000 years in the GFFA?

Ah, well. I guess this is one of those things we'll just have to handwave.

Frank Stark;

I would be willing to pay for each "chapter" release. I did read in an interview that the uber-plan was to have this game be Kotor 3, 4, 5 and so on. If the storyline content falls out that way, I'd pay for each, just like I paid for both Kotor and Kotor 2 (even though 2 was only 2/3s of a cool game).

Now that's a payment system I could get behind. Of course, I'd want enough new content, story-wise, to justify the expense.

[Frank Stark]

Of course, I'd want enough new content, story-wise, to justify the expense.

But of course. For example, I'd hope each iteration would have a new class-specific branching mission storyline, just like what they are bragging about now for release 1. Obviously, they might be of varying length or quality, but at least it's new content I can play solo. Maybe we'd get 2 or 3 of these "expansions" before improving software and hardware force them to move on to The Old Republic 2.

I'll be surprised if, in the end, they can avoid subscription fees. It just doesn't seem like what people develop MMOs for. But at least they're discussing alternatives. Did anyone have an interview or preview reference for the pricing system possibilities mentioned earlier?

[Cuellar]

I don't really care what they do, but I hate the pay as you go models. Generally they make content trickle out in small chunks, rather than havnig massive expansions that most MMORPGs have. It creates a natural progression where you get better and better until you "beat" the expansion... and if you are busy at work for a couple months you can still catch up later. You have 200 hours of content to do with as you will over a year... rather than 4 hours a week.

And it definitely doesn't work with really story based models, because how do you set that up if you have 10 episodes, and someone only buys episode 10? Each then has to stand alone... unlike an expansion where you have 3 major story plots or something intertwined.

Anyway, it is a video game, it doesn't NEED to make perfect sense. The reason they picked this time period vs another, is that it was already defined as a big battle between good and evil. They learned from earlier star wars games that people want ot play Jedi, which is impossible in the "modern" time, where you only had good jedi, who got wiped out by Vader. All the major characters and world defining events have already occured. The last time where there was a large number of good and bad jedi running around was during the KOTOR period, which they defined pretty well in the first game. Bioware pretty much "owns" that period, so it obviously makes sense they'd create a game set during that period.

I'll agree that I like the combo of solo and multiplayer in 1 game. KOTOR's main problem for me was you couldn't play with friends.

[Slurktan]

The heroes of the movies use swords for chrissakes and you're complaining that technology isn't advancing?!!?

I take it you missed the point of the "swords" I guess then.

Wert,

I have no problem with the Jedi temple looking the same, I see it as similar to the Pyramids. My problem comes with the gunship given that there were no republic gunships or anything like that before the clone army was created. Well except now for this damn near exact replica 3500 years earlier. It's just really fucking lazy by the designers.

[felice]

I don't have a problem with the lack of technological progress. If they'd already reached the limits of what the laws of physics allowed and spent thousands of years fine-tuning when the gunship was originally designed, why not reuse the same blueprints 3500 years later instead of wasting a whole lot of time and effort designing something new from scratch that will only be equally good at best? The rapid progress in the expanded universe seems less plausible to me.

[Rhom]

I don't have a problem with the lack of technological progress. If they'd already reached the limits of what the laws of physics allowed and spent thousands of years fine-tuning when the gunship was originally designed, why not reuse the same blueprints 3500 years later instead of wasting a whole lot of time and effort designing something new from scratch that will only be equally good at best? The rapid progress in the expanded universe seems less plausible to me.

I don't know... look at our history. The bow and arrow was the pinnacle of technology for thousands of years. We went through the dark ages with little to no technological progress. The Renaissance brought about a couple hundred years of advancements followed by the Industrial Revolution. Finally, we hit the modern age and we go from learning to fly to putting a man on the moon in roughly 70 years time.

Stretch that out on a galactic scale and I think that's actually a pretty fair parallel.

[gladius]

The galactic republic existed for more than 20000 years. How much time does an advanced civilization need to develop everything that is worth developing?

[Frank Stark]

I guess I never felt that coherent technological continuity was the purview of Star Wars. In that, I always though Star Wars was more like fantasy (evil sorcerers, swords, etc), but set in space. Sure there are random name drops for sci fi tech, but you never really get into the minutiae of it all. Maybe some of the books or other games try more though, I don't know. My knowledge of the SW universe doesn't extend past the movies and KOTOR games.

[TheBigTEA]

I have high hopes for this. The trailer was just awesome and if they are not rushed I trust these guys to put out a killer game.

As far as the tech advance goes when you have lightsabers what else is there to discover right? Frickin' laser swords man.

[Rhom]

I'm still skeptical about the ability to put a single player story into an MMO. A limited scale online RPG like Diablo? Sure. I can see that. But a story in a persistent world MMO setting... I don't see it.

[Cuellar]

I think LOTRO already demonstrated that it is easily doable. They just need to do the same thing for 50+ hours (even the same as NWN2).... hopefully it just won't suck.

[Third Knight on the Left]

New class profile just came out. It's the Smuggler and in the game play footage they can use cover. Very interesting.

[Crazydog7]

I am cautiously intrigued but it does disappoint me that #1 they rushed the Sith Lords giving us a watered-down candyass short version of the game and #2 scraped the idea for three and then didn't scrap it and took it in an entirely new direction.

[Derfel Cadarn]

I am cautiously intrigued but it does disappoint me that #1 they rushed the Sith Lords giving us a watered-down candyass short version of the game and #2 scraped the idea for three and then didn't scrap it and took it in an entirely new direction.

Bioware didn't rush anything, it was Obsidian that made Sith Lords. Bioware have more clout than Obsidian so hopefully they can resist any Lucasarts BS about getting the game out 'for Christmas'. Hopefully Lucasarts have taken a long look at the fates of mmorpgs that launch too early and either died or scraped by.