Star Wars The Old Republic: Great, or Horrendously Awful

And also, 'balance' is brought to the Force by squashing the Dark side completely. So that only the Light side remains.

And it's still better than the radical differences between the Original Triology and the Modern Triology.
Amazing!

The trailer looked awesome, but the game doesn't. What the heck is with the cartoony graphics and everyone wearing tights? Not Star Wars like at all.

I like how people can bash a game without actually seeing it.

It may turn out to suck, it may not. Time will tell.

And also, 'balance' is brought to the Force by squashing the Dark side completely. So that only the Light side remains.

I could never understand the logic of that either. And Jedi use their powers for knowledge and defense, never attack. Unless of course we're talking about an evil Sith lord then it's kill kill KILL the Sith lord!!!

The hypocrisy is one of the many parts of the newer age of Star Wars.

Epitomized in Obi-Wan's face-palm comment: "Only the Sith deal in absolutes!"
*Facepalm*

BUt the differences between the original trilogy and the modern trilogy aren't as bad as this game. Really, all that was..odd in the modern trilogy was that Anakin Skywalker, the man who became Darth Vader, was a pansy. Oh right, and Darth Sidious is Dr. Frankenstein.

And I suppose you are right, Annatar. But if what we've seen so far is any indication of the game, it will no doubt suck, plotwise.
It may be outrageously fun to play, but without a good interesting story, it's just not Star Wars.

Quoting GeneralEtrius,

reply 3

The trailer looked awesome, but the game doesn't. What the heck is with the cartoony graphics and everyone wearing tights? Not Star Wars like at all.

How do you know they didn't wear tights? For all you know Obi-wan and Darth Vader had pink dresses on under their robes.

As far as cartoony graphics... That's a game maker's way of saying: "We wanna make LOTS of money by putting our game on pretty much any computer on the market, and even some which aren't anymore." Not to mention, they are pretty much fighting for the same market share as those various online superhero games (there's what, 3 of em now?) since stars wars is more or less superheroes with magic powers in space. Oh yeah, and they're ninjas too.

And on the point of 'balance'... What determines if the force is balanced? Is it the evil sith controlling an equal number of magic invisible flags? Or is it more of a 'whoever kills the most clones wins' sort of thing? Hehe, I bet that will be their version of WoW's battleground system.

Edit:

I just watched some of their videos on the site and the cinematic trailer... and now I can really tell it will be bad. All the worlds are being designed by hand. This means they may look pretty, but will be relatively small and closed, and there will not be many of them. I would wager they will have around 100 planets, 200 if they work really hard/make them very small. As for me, I'm waiting for Infinity to satisfy my hunger for a space MMO.

And I suppose you are right, Annatar. But if what we've seen so far is any indication of the game, it will no doubt suck, plotwise.
It may be outrageously fun to play, but without a good interesting story, it's just not Star Wars.

But at the same time, it is an MMO and not a single player RPG. I know they are trying to weave some story into each character's quests, but ultimately the curse of an MMO is that the setting provides nothing more than a backdrop and some context.

I really do not expect genius storytelling. I am glad they are differentiating the quests for the classes, but in the end those will be over, and you will still have the basic MMO things to do, fight in PvP, or raid, or what have you.

Its like this: if they bring back the skill system of the original Star Wars Galaxies, the player driven market and replace the generic missions with an entertaining storyline, then the game will not suck, regardless of recycled content and concepts.

If, howewer, they copy WoW and add their storyline, then the game will suck. Period.

I'm betting on the second, but I'd LOVE to be wrong. Doesn't look like I will be though, what with all the *ptui* classes they've been touting around.

Its the plague of the gaming world. Your average gamer is a person with the attention span of a parrot and creative ability of a drunken snail. And big companies make games for the masses. Do the math.

But the trailer was awesome. CGI gets better and better these days.

Wow, by the looks of it, there won't even be spaceships (player controlled ones anyway). They will just be WoW style flightpaths to get to the other zones... Er, I mean planets. In the entire 15 pages of concept art on the site, only 1 picture has any ships in it at all, and thats the Sacking of Coruscant picture shown in the first post.

A Star Wars MMO without player involved space battles... Now that's something even I am suprised about.

Alway, 100 worlds? Wanna know how many they're going to have? I bet under a dozen. No way they're going to handcraft a hundred different themes unless they make them the size of a closet.

Infinity now... that's going to be epic. Its symptomatic that its an indy game, with a vision like that. In fact, I can't really recall when was the last big sandbox released. GTA IV, but that was rehashing a proven concept. Sandboxes are often viewed as uncertain investments by big companies for some reason.

Quoting Annatar11,

reply 8

And I suppose you are right, Annatar. But if what we've seen so far is any indication of the game, it will no doubt suck, plotwise.
It may be outrageously fun to play, but without a good interesting story, it's just not Star Wars.
But at the same time, it is an MMO and not a single player RPG. I know they are trying to weave some story into each character's quests, but ultimately the curse of an MMO is that the setting provides nothing more than a backdrop and some context.

I really do not expect genius storytelling. I am glad they are differentiating the quests for the classes, but in the end those will be over, and you will still have the basic MMO things to do, fight in PvP, or raid, or what have you.

Oh I understand. Story in an MMO is notoriously hard. What I was trying to say is that for a background plot, which drives the actual player experience in the game, they failed miserably. Why not just set the game back a couple of years, during the whole Sith war with Revan and Malek, rather than invent a highly improbable (read as ridiculously ludicrous) scenario.

Quoting ManSh00ter,

reply 9

Its the plague of the gaming world. Your average gamer is a person with the attention span of a parrot and creative ability of a drunken snail. And big companies make games for the masses. Do the math.

But the trailer was awesome. CGI gets better and better these days.

Unfortunately, that's the problem. The game companies automatically assume that the masses who will consume their products are a pack of dolts incapable of recognizing any sort of quality entertainment. And while yes, there are those out there who just want to kill things and run around and beat people up, I'd hazard a guess and say that a large porion of the gaming culture actually cares about the quality of the entertainment in their games, not just the amount of OMGKILLFESTBBQ! involved in their video games.

When the companies act like gamers are a pack of dolts, it's insulting to the majority who aren't.
That's the whole reason Star Wars: The Old Republic has recycled concepts and obvious, easy to recognize similarities between it and more recent Star Wars stories. The powers that be think that we're too stupid to understand that Star Wars isn't always woo-hoo seperatists and droids and clones and laser guns. They feel that they need to make SWOR easily recognizable so that we *know* that it's Star Wars with our eyes closed, and three miles away from the game.
It's insulting.
Star Wars doesn't need to spoon-feed fans. Show us, don't tell us.

Yeah, well SWG didn't have space combat for a long time, and it was a great Star Wars MMO. Provided you knew where and when and how to play. The absolute best roleplaying experience I had online was in SWG. And that's where MMO makers continually fail in their design - the always miss out on the roleplaying tools.

Forget your friggin' stroyline - we, the players, can always make a better story than your writers. In SWG, I was a Trando hunter who dabbled in some bounties from time to time and had loose contacts with the Rebellion. I spied for the Rebellion, I smuggled weapons, kidnapped rival gang members, fought in the streets of Mos Espa for turf, interrogated enemy agents, got harassed by stormtroopers, thrown in jail, busted out of jail, had secret meeting in the middle of nowhere, stood guard while the bosses talked business, participated in speeder bike racing, hunted rare animals for a private contract by a high-rated crafter and often got drunk silly during cantina nights.

I had more fun roleplaying in SWG than playing *single-player* RPG's with a dedicated storyline. And SWG had, hands down, the richest roleplaying tools I ever saw. Man, you could even emote your mood.

This new attempt at the same thing does only one thing right - its in a timeline where every other person you saw on the street was either a Jedi or a Sith. So at least the levitators can't ruin an awesome game with their incessant whining and imba abilities.

I'm not saying that I'm a Star Wars buff or anything but I'm pretty sure the Sith have held onto the same ideas and beliefs they've had for thousands of years....why can't they hold onto the same space ships or body armor?

WAT? The sith are attacking again?!!?1one! *darth vader* NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The sith always returning can be explained easily with a quote from overlord. "Evil always finds a way."

Quoting Granolan2021,

reply 14

I'm not saying that I'm a Star Wars buff or anything but I'm pretty sure the Sith have held onto the same ideas and beliefs they've had for thousands of years....why can't they hold onto the same space ships or body armor?

http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html

A number of good reasons why the Sith can't hold on to territory, equipment, or other bits of intergalactic stuff.

Quoting Granolan2021,

reply 14

I'm not saying that I'm a Star Wars buff or anything but I'm pretty sure the Sith have held onto the same ideas and beliefs they've had for thousands of years....why can't they hold onto the same space ships or body armor?

Would you want to use a revolutionary war musket, or an M16?
How about a Model T ford, or a M1 Abrams Main Battle Tank?

Ideas are eternal. Technology, is not.

Quoting ManSh00ter,

reply 13

Yeah, well SWG didn't have space combat for a long time, and it was a great Star Wars MMO. Provided you knew where and when and how to play. The absolute best roleplaying experience I had online was in SWG. And that's where MMO makers continually fail in their design - the always miss out on the roleplaying tools.

Forget your friggin' stroyline - we, the players, can always make a better story than your writers. In SWG, I was a Trando hunter who dabbled in some bounties from time to time and had loose contacts with the Rebellion. I spied for the Rebellion, I smuggled weapons, kidnapped rival gang members, fought in the streets of Mos Espa for turf, interrogated enemy agents, got harassed by stormtroopers, thrown in jail, busted out of jail, had secret meeting in the middle of nowhere, stood guard while the bosses talked business, participated in speeder bike racing, hunted rare animals for a private contract by a high-rated crafter and often got drunk silly during cantina nights.

I had more fun roleplaying in SWG than playing *single-player* RPG's with a dedicated storyline. And SWG had, hands down, the richest roleplaying tools I ever saw. Man, you could even emote your mood.

This new attempt at the same thing does only one thing right - its in a timeline where every other person you saw on the street was either a Jedi or a Sith. So at least the levitators can't ruin an awesome game with their incessant whining and imba abilities.

That's a really good point.

That's why the Star Wars: Old Republic should NOT have a main focus storyline. MMOs are inherently open and based on user created plots. By adding a storyline, and a clumsy one at that, is detrimental. Galaxies provided the best template. A basic, overall plot (The Empire vs the Rebels), and left everything else up to the players. There was no heavy handed "Fight for freedom or for EEEEVIL!"

Galaxies was a great game. Why not improve on that template, rather than create and entire new one, that is based on shoddy work?

Plus, billing Star Wars: The Old Republic as The First MMO With a Story is painful, when the story is not what makes a MMO!

Leave the story to the players! Give a basic background, just enough to start the ball rolling! Let your customers fill in for you.

the games is not close to being out, please relax

I'm not necessarily the biggest MMO fan or player, but from what I've seen, all a company needs to make a profit off of a MMO is a relatively wide fanbase (who may need a little refresher on the main topic) and a pretty easy, basic story and game mechanics. After that, the MASSIVELY part of the MMO genre should kick in, because there needs to be an expansive universe for the player to make their own decisions and craft their own 'life'.

That's what made WoW the phenomenon it is today; people who loved playing Warcraft and Starcraft jumped at the opportunity to get in on Blizzard's newest endeavor, and combined with an easy to learn, yet expansive world, the ball got rolling and never looked back. On a side note, how cool would a Starcraft MMO be? But I digress...

What made Galaxies so great is that it tied into the movies pretty well. People who don't delve into comics or books or anything else StarWars except the movies still could go around and have a good time, because they still could figure out what's going on.

Here, with SW:OR, there's not really as big an interest, or a knowledge base. Unless a person has played KoToR (2), or delved pretty extensively into the literature pertaining to it, there's not really a whole lot of common knowledge about this era in StarWars history.

As far as the whole technology/aesthetics/"different eras but they look similar" argument...well, there's no real, easy, logical answer. As far as a corporate standpoint goes, it would be smart to give people something they recognize, because, as my above point stated, it's you'd be hard pressed to find someone off the street that could tell you anything about the Sith Civil War or Malak or Revan.

A person looks at that Republic Special Forces thinks 'OOH!Stormtrooper/ Clone! I know what that is!" Because lets face it, the two big symbols of the StarWars universe are lightsabers and Stormtroopers, among other things. (BTW, did you know the term 'droids' is trademarked, and Battletech had to change its name from BattleDroids because George Lucas threatened a lawsuit?) Same thing with So people kinda are drawn into the universe there.

As far as storyline-wise, the technology being relatively similar in 4000(?) years or so between OR era and Movie Era is bogus. But as far as the aesthetic aspect is concerned, it's not totally far-fetched to think that the Kaminoan designers of the clone uniforms looked back at these Republic Special Ops people and said to themselves "That looks kind of cool! I'm inspired to make something that looks like that!"

Maybe after the defeat of the Empire, the Legacy Era Designers of the Paelleon were looking to recapture some of the old, fearsome Sith glory and were inspired to bring back that terror by designing what appeared to be an Old Republic Sith Battlecruiser.

Its not unheard of in our world. Coincidence happens--the swastika was a holy symbol in Hinduism for thousands of years befor the Nazis used it. The designers of the American presidential memorials, Lincoln most famously, used the old Ancient Greek Ionian columns as an aesthetic piece for the memorials. So it is POSSIBLE. Not necessarily probable.

Wow, long post.

There will be worse games out there I'm sure.

I love the amazing amount of BS they pack into their first QA question on the site:

"The Old Republic represents a new approach to online entertainment, featuring immersive storytelling, dynamic combat, and groundbreaking companion characters."

A new approach to online entertainment... Let's see, can you think of any MMO whose devs would ever call it an old approach? I can't. Heck, even WoW says it! From WoW's general FAQ: "World of Warcraft differs from other MMORPGs in many ways."

Immersive storytelling... Yep, another generic claim. From WoW's: "Additionally, our quest system provides an enormous variety of captivating quests with story elements, dynamic events, and flexible reward systems."

Dynamic combat... Dynamic is defined as interactive... Which means: the player is involved in the combat. Nothing new there.

Groundbreaking companion characters... Hmm. In other words, you will get escort quests and an occasional redshirt to follow you around and get in front of that doorway you wanted to go through.

The game doesn't need to be out for you to see what it aims to achieve. And I, as a player who has a lot of MMO experience, can already see that their design is flawed, where MMO quality and innovation is concerned (I have no doubt they're going to make big $$$ with it). Bioware is trying to meld their singleplayer franchize with a MMO concept.

As SSAF said, MMO's are inherently open. They're at their best when they provide a loose background and an entertaining sandbox. Forget the storyline. Its fun only once. But a sandbox can be fun as long as there are people playing in it.

The next MMO which dares to break the mold and combines AAA content with 3rd persion perspective realtime twitch-based combat, complete with (for some reason developers always miss this one) a lock on melee combat system, sandbox style skill-centric (as opposed to gear-centric) character building and player-driven economy will be the next WoW. Throw in a good palette of social and roleplaying tools and you've got a game for everyone, from CS junkies looking for a quick fix to roleplaying nerds wanting to cut someone up with style.

All these companies who think that innovation is expressed through simple and shallow changes of already clicheized concepts are in it primarily for the love of the money, even when they're talking like they're in it for the love of the game. The mid-level designers maybe are, but the real bosses either aren't or belong to the ranks of the incredibly frustrated as they are forced to watch their dreams being gutted for the sake of bigger revenues.

Oh, and Starcraft MMO is coming for sure. Guess what Starcraft II is for - like Warcraft III, it's both a launching pad and a measuring tool for Blizzard to see if a new MMO would be viable. WoW, while still a giant, is getting a bit old. And there's a whole Sci-Fi playerbase out there, all alone and untapped...

@ ManSh00ter: Blizzard are already working on a new mmo (dubbed "next gen mmo") and it isnt starcraft. theyve specifically stated its a new IP entirely.

@ topic: I understand the hope that this will not become WoW in space with lightsabers, however the vast majority of mmo players play WoW and expect all new mmos to essentially be WoW 2 in a different skin. The mass of mmos dubbed "fail" by the standard mmo community is a sign of that.

Its new in development so dont take what you see too seriously yet, itll change

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Star Wars The Old Republic: Great, or Horrendously Awful