Drakron

DragonLance been run by the novels for a great deal of time and I dont like when that happens, writters are doing overreaching story archs that will simply rip apart the setting if it serves the story. That what made me left FR, I got tired of the novel line running the setting development. Personaly I would like to see a Legend of the Five Rings based game, chance for that to happen are slim to none.

JE have a kind of paper-rock-scissor system, I dont think its dumb down but its not developed much and some things sould never been put in it (transformation) and eventually ends up in a no challange.

Well right now there are no new "gameworld events", the game does use a quest system that is in many cases tied to classes, if you are a warrior/mesmer you never go in monk quests. I understand some people will run out of quests eventually, its possible to redo the missions even after completed then and their bonus (but no mission or bonus XP if they were already done. I think adding new maps and quests is not incredible hard and likely they will do so in some cases but since Guild Wars require no fee to play its likely the blunt of new content will be expansions since Guild Wars is more a game that must be played online that a classic MMORPG, its also story driven so you cannot move into new towns without being send there or walk there, the story unfolds as you play along. Of course I wonder exactly how far they can push the story, the game starts in pre-searing and then moves into 2 years after it (nothing you will not know if you read the manual) and you cannot come back to pre-searing, I doubt the expansion packs are going to make any radical changes to the existing maps of the terms of a searing. I think they are not trying to keep legacy players by giving then incentives to play their lv20 characters, MMORPGs do that because such players form the core of the people that will continue to pay to play, Guild Wars is not trying that and so they have to attract players in diferent ways. I think they looked at the StarCraft community that played for years and the Diablo community that also played for years and build Guild Wars for then, they appear to be trying something new that is very diferent from the classic MMORPGs in many ways.

Yst. I will explain, the cost of MMORPGs goes to servers, in guild wars the only time you see the other in the server is in city districts (towns) and even there you have several districts to ease server load, the mission areas are set on a map that only have you and the people that have joined with you. So servers dont get much strain allowing a low cost, my guess is what the servers get in strain is similar to what Diablo 2 got in strain, in the city players cannot attack anything so its more a "3d chat room" that a mission map. ArenaNet is behind Guild Wars so they have a pretty good idea of how the server system operates, besides less that a week after the "casinos" start to take place (meaning, people were using the /roll emote for running online gambling) they removed the emote, they also make several alterations and the next update will seperate european servers by language, so if you have language preference to german it will send you to german districts, they also changed many things and are on top of farming areans with unusual high drops.

GameSpot says nothing about any Xenosaga 2 PAL release and I find no link after a Google search. Not that I cared, from what I read it appears the quality gone much downhill in 2 and from the looks of things its unlikely to change.

MMORPGs all charge for expansions, they rightly do so since as the monthly fee is to pay the server support as a expansion is creating new content for the game.

That forum requires registration to read and that says all.

I am not going that far but D&D Online is not going to emulate the D&D experience. I also decided to check it and I have to say their "inovation" appears to be not allowing players to gain experience and items until they complete a quest, not only that strikes me as dumb beyond reason (it prevents exploration for the sake of exploration) in trying to fix some MMORPGs issues (farming) but what it does is simply make item selling issues to grow out of hand. Also I am suspecious of turning a turn based system into a real time, I could not care less about thei claims that WotC aproves then since they made 3.5 and they are more Hasbro "yes man" milking the D&D brand dry that anything else.

Its not, it guild (co-operative) oriented and GvG is a part of guilds but not even a absolute requirement for a guild hall. Guild Wars is quest based and even at pre-searing you need a player to get the ressurection signet and to complete a quest (since one have to open a gate). In fact many people complain that Guild Wars is very co-operative oriented and even with henchmans its best to get other people to join to complete quests that are what gives most XP. Also many skills have to be captured from enemies, there are no trainers for then so people end up playing "PvE" to unlock then for their PvP characters. Its not PvP, there are only a area were people can go PvP, the Arena. Even GvG were recently changed so its not as easy to start a GvG (people were screwing up ranks by starting then without the Guild Leader and Guild Officers permision). Also there are the missions that can be replayed that are geared towards co-op. Yes, even if GW allows to start a lv20 character off the bat its requires training. But still the "meat" of the game appears to be PvE and I very much enjoy the "storytelling" basic behind the game ... how many MMORPGs give players voice acting on the in game cinematics?

That does not work, Komani actually heavy invest in the PAL market. Other companies do not, Namco for example is unwilling to release many games for PAL region and so we dont see many games, Nintendo appears to force publishers to do all regions since if was up to the publishers you would only see Nintendo handhelds support. In console terms we are catching up in numbers but we are a bit like the US 10 years ago, not enough market for the publishers to risk game genders they feel they dont sale, RPGs are seen as such a gender in europe. Square is very lazy as a publisher, they appear to taken forever to reach the US and their presence in europe is a bad joke (EA is "nice" enough to pick up Square titles for europe, I might hate their evil hellspawn ways but damn they can really publish a game) so ...

I've heard Square forgot were is Europe again and they are trying to find that world map the portuguese left there in the 15th century so they can locate it.

WarCraft predates Ages of Empires, its goes way back to floppy days (or close enough) being one of the first RTS games and its interface is pretty much used by most RTS even today. Before it there was Dune, the first RTS game. Be careful, there is a reason why its WarCraft 3 and why Ages of Empires is still at 2, one very much predates the other and one heavly borrowed concepts of the other.

There is Guild Wars, completly free. That's not easy to know if its "sucks" or not, MMORPGs can "suck" since they make alterations all the time. WoW honor system is relative new, SWG changed many things (such as Jedi characters) over tine. MMORPGs end up with a very big slice of Online cRPG, the alterantives are few and they might not work too well. That is a issue with the market, right now the main choices outside the paying MMORPG format are Guild Wars, NwN and Dungeon Siege. True that WarCraft are RTS games and WoW "borrowed" from it, playing WoW and WarCraft 3 online are totaly diferent experiences.

More coherent, perhaps. More interesting, likely not. More diverse, no. A issue I have with KotOR is there was no conflics in terms of dialogue, Kreia and the Jedi council used the exact same words and belived in the exact same thing and that was wrong since Kreia was viewed as a renegade and so what she belived and people natural use diferent words to descrive something that cannot be easy descrived. "Echo in the force" was a much overused word and the Jedi council sould avoided to use such world, KotOR 2 was simply spawning a theory about the Force as if it was the correct acepted theory as in Star Wars the Force sould never be put into any kind of acepted theory. Diferent writters will have diferent views of the story, they will see diferent things and that will reflect on NPCs being diferent, one writer might get the story right but there will be no conflics, no diversity of stated opinion ... it will be the same and it will feel on a subconsient level a bland, static world. I usually rape BioWare but one thing I have to say I like is they have several people in dialogue and that translates into the world as a good thing.

Its my opinion Volourn, Kreia being forced as somewhat anoying and "well written" she is not exactly, she becames too looney at the end with wanting to end the force and then she wants the exile to go search for Revan for some god knows reason.

I certainly did not, KotOR II OE NPCs looked like to be in a competition to see who was the more screwed up. Make then too much artificial to my taste and given me PS:T flashbacks.

They sould change the name to "privacy invasion, get a divorce and/or a social works visiting"

Yes, if its on TV then IT MUST BE TRUE !!!

Considering the PS3 is backward compatible ... I doubt it. True that FF IX have lower sales but I blame more the game (that was a classic FF title after 2 non FF classics that were all PS One titles) that it was released at the same time as PS2 launch. Besides FF XII have been delayed, it sould have come out about a year ago but considering the radical departure of some FF mechanics its no suprise. Another thing to consider is that the PS2 market is far greater that the PS One market was, the PS3 is not that much a improvent over the PS2 (unless you are a graphic whore) as it was the change from PS One to PS2, there are several games that are going to be released around the time PS3 launches, not to say PS3 might sell as "hot cakes" but its not going to be near PS2 numbers.

Or Darque ... that is close enough.

I always wanted to play as a half-demon undead giant sperm whale ...

It was a Tomb Raider clone, fun or not it looked LA was just going down Eidos road intead of doing something inovative, the fact they abandoned the new Indy direction just shows it failed its objectives. My biggest grip was taking away the Nazis and replace then by sovients ... it simply did not feel right to me.

You managed to care even more that I do.

Are you joking? I have a tough time saying they rip off Tomb Raider since Tomb Raider was based on Indy to start with but they were pretty much the same as Tomb Raider and that was not good since its became a tired formula real fast. Best way to make a Indy game is a hybrid of a adventure game with action sequences.

Complicated. I do think the idea of a God is possible (and conforting) but I am not willing to jump into any organized religion and even less of looking at facts and throw then away because they dont fit in some creation "history".