K3 AND K4

[Calax]

Most MMO's now a days have RP servers set up, or at least unofficial ones set up by the players (meaning anyone can play on there, but most RP'ers go there).

 

The interesting thing about quests is that when you break it down in ANY RPG you'll find that all quests are "Kill X for NPC Y" or "collect 20 of piece Z for NPC A". It's just that the SP rpg's usually disguise it better because they don't give you strait "Kill X for Y" objectives you can look at.

[kingofsquid]

Link

 

That.......Actually looks pretty dang cool.

[Darth InSidious]

Most MMO's now a days have RP servers set up, or at least unofficial ones set up by the players (meaning anyone can play on there, but most RP'ers go there).

 

The interesting thing about quests is that when you break it down in ANY RPG you'll find that all quests are "Kill X for NPC Y" or "collect 20 of piece Z for NPC A". It's just that the SP rpg's usually disguise it better because they don't give you strait "Kill X for Y" objectives you can look at.

Actually, Planescape has a few quests nothing like that, and MotB is full of more abstract quest-ing.

 

More seriously, though, you're right up to a point. But then, you can reduce all fiction down to about 7 basic stories. That still wasn't the point. The point, rather, was that (successful) MMOs avoid innovation and variation in quest designs, and maintain minimal plot and story, if any. We aren't talking about the issue of reduction. We're talking about the issue of the MMO genre lacking almost anything but the bare bones, and the players encourage that. Me? I like cutscenes, dialogue, and quests that aren't entirely about huuuuuuge stretches of combat (the caveat being unless the combat is very fun and/or the dialogue is not at all good). I require a little more than a glorified XP system to be entertained.

[Nihilus5078]

Link

 

Looks crummy. But mere images dont automatically mean how legit or ****ty a game is.

[Nihilus5078]

Given the recent poll on KotORFiles ( link ), I'm fairly certain that the majority of KotOR fans are up for the MMO, even if I'm not. And the non-fan playerbase are far less picky about stuff like whether it's an MMO, TBH, and are for the most part of the "zOMG, KotOR II suxxx, it r 2 broked" camp.

 

Have you looked at the comments left below? Some of those people there were quite anti-mmo, as would I be if I were to respond to that. The thing that might make me happy and probably a lot more people happy is let BioWare do their best to make an MMO of good quality, then let Obsidian make an RPG KotOR IV so that way you make more people happy, rather than just a lot of people, which was the reason I started this.

Edited July 15, 2009 by Nihilus5078

[Darth InSidious]

Given the recent poll on KotORFiles ( link ), I'm fairly certain that the majority of KotOR fans are up for the MMO, even if I'm not. And the non-fan playerbase are far less picky about stuff like whether it's an MMO, TBH, and are for the most part of the "zOMG, KotOR II suxxx, it r 2 broked" camp.

 

Have you looked at the comments left below? Some of those people there were quite anti-mmo, as would I be if I were to respond to that. The thing that might make me happy and probably a lot more people happy is let BioWare do their best to make an MMO of good quality, then let Obsidian make an RPG KotOR IV so that way you make more people happy, rather than just a lot of people, which was the reason I started this.

There are 62 comments, and over 2000 votes. Your point...?

[Nihilus5078]

Given the recent poll on KotORFiles ( link ), I'm fairly certain that the majority of KotOR fans are up for the MMO, even if I'm not. And the non-fan playerbase are far less picky about stuff like whether it's an MMO, TBH, and are for the most part of the "zOMG, KotOR II suxxx, it r 2 broked" camp.

 

Have you looked at the comments left below? Some of those people there were quite anti-mmo, as would I be if I were to respond to that. The thing that might make me happy and probably a lot more people happy is let BioWare do their best to make an MMO of good quality, then let Obsidian make an RPG KotOR IV so that way you make more people happy, rather than just a lot of people, which was the reason I started this.

There are 62 comments, and over 2000 votes. Your point...?

 

Um, Bull @#$%. I seen how powerful some of those anti-mmo people show their anger.

Edited July 15, 2009 by Nihilus5078

[Darth InSidious]

A proportion out of 62 people are anti-MMO; nevertheless around 70% of those polled were enthusiastic about the new MMO. If you have an actual argument, formulate and post.

[Calax]

Most MMO's now a days have RP servers set up, or at least unofficial ones set up by the players (meaning anyone can play on there, but most RP'ers go there).

 

The interesting thing about quests is that when you break it down in ANY RPG you'll find that all quests are "Kill X for NPC Y" or "collect 20 of piece Z for NPC A". It's just that the SP rpg's usually disguise it better because they don't give you strait "Kill X for Y" objectives you can look at.

Actually, Planescape has a few quests nothing like that, and MotB is full of more abstract quest-ing.

 

More seriously, though, you're right up to a point. But then, you can reduce all fiction down to about 7 basic stories. That still wasn't the point. The point, rather, was that (successful) MMOs avoid innovation and variation in quest designs, and maintain minimal plot and story, if any. We aren't talking about the issue of reduction. We're talking about the issue of the MMO genre lacking almost anything but the bare bones, and the players encourage that. Me? I like cutscenes, dialogue, and quests that aren't entirely about huuuuuuge stretches of combat (the caveat being unless the combat is very fun and/or the dialogue is not at all good). I require a little more than a glorified XP system to be entertained.

You have to do A LOT more boiling to get the story thing than the quest difference. As to the MMO storyline, the reason that the storyline isn't presented in Bombastic cutscenes long single quests that span the entire game, and... well I guess that's the major difference in the two... anyway, the reason that they don't have the cutscenes and associated pariphanalia is because when you're leveling the 15th guy through the spot you don't exactly want to spend 5 minutes watching mary sue flee the big bad monster for the umpteenth billion time. And the only TRUE cutscene (that interrupts gameplay) that we've ever seen in an MMO is in Warcraft at Wrathgate. They were only able to do this because of the ability to Phase because otherwise the players would probably come back to a dead body when the scene ended rather than just standing around. Most MMO tales are woven into the quest text (you know, the thing that explains WHY you're killing X for npc Y?). In Warcraft one of the earlier quests has you running down a teacher who fell for one of his young students, then killled her, her male friend, and her whole family (I think on the last one) in a fit of rage. In another, in BlackRock Depths (lvl 55-58 instance) you have to go find the kings daughter and rescue her from the evil dark dwarf king. Except when you rescue her, you find that A) She's pregnant and B) She didn't need no rescuing, she was down there by her own will.

[alanschu]

Ah, but what sort of content? The MMO and SPRPG playerbases want different things: Those that are playing SPRPGs are generally looking for story, characters, etc etc; by contrast, it seems that a hell of a lot of the people on an MMO are interested in grinding to the next level, not dialogue or interesting quests. I've been dong some reading up on quest design recently since avoiding the spike-traps of fedex and killquest are rather proving difficult. Two things came out of this:

 

The "interesting" thing about what BioWare has said is that they are hoping to make a story-driven MMO with a very strong narrative.

 

That's what I meant when I said it "remains to be seen."

 

You might say "But MMO people don't want that," but who knows? Maybe KOTOR people do.

 

 

I have some impressions based on some footage I have seen (basically the behind closed doors E3 gameplay demo), but I doubt I can really talk about it. All I'll say is the project seems pretty ambitious. Will it succeed/fail? I don't know. I don't believe there's a release date publicly announced which means the game might not even remain the same as what I saw. But what I saw I really liked, and I pretty much put it up as the MMO I am most eager to try out, simply because I'm curious to see if it's as different as they are hoping it will be.

 

 

 

Yeah, but I'm not particularly keen on playing with total strangers either way. Tried MP with strangers on various games, and it never works out well. If it were possible with a set of friends, and to lock out all other players/set up a private server, that would be a more interesting proposition. I'm guessing that's not going to be the case, though, since LA and Bioware want to turn big profits on this.

 

 

I'm not really either, but every now and then you'll find a good group of people and then it's no different than playing with your friends IMO. I really enjoyed WoW a lot, and would typically only play with RL friends. But I ended up finding a good group of people to play some endgame content, and it was probably the most fun I had ever had in an MMO, which is pretty good. I've met a lot of douchebags too, but never enough to keep me from coming back.

 

It's not that hard to be relatively insular in WoW, so I imagine it won't really be that hard in SWTOR either. In WoW I can remove myself from every public channel so that the only chats I ever see are from party, guild, or whispers.

 

Ironically the only thing I see being "bad" for the community for SWTOR, is if the game IS ridiculously popular. One thing I've noticed about playing LOTRO is that the smaller user base seems to have lent itself to better ratio of smart people to retarded people.

Edited July 16, 2009 by alanschu

[Nihilus5078]

I have to question about one of the comments that someone left on that poll, saying that after K2 was a great game that a KotOR III is unnecessary. Bull @#$%! So if people are hoping MMO just because they think a KotOR III is unnecessary because KotOR II was such a great game, complete wrong doing. I mean, you could also just make the @#$%ing game to have a single player mode and then have a MMORPG mode for the game too, that might make me happy and a few other people happy too. If the MMORPG so they say has a plot, like you do this, complete this big mission, to win the game, then the game is worth it, but if it's plotless like Galaxies, forget it.

[alanschu]

I certainly think it'd be wise to temper your expectations for a true Single Player KOTOR 3.

 

I'd love it too, but I'm okay if it never comes out. Life will go on.

[Nihilus5078]

Then maybe I should just burn a hole through BioWare, with a blow toy

[HoonDing]

I wouldn't be surprised if the MMO 'explains' what happened to Revan/Exile in the Unknown Regions to render a KOTOR 3 unnecessary.

[Fionavar]

Could we please try to limit the argumentative nature of the discussion and try to post in am ore constructive manner (yes this is rhetorical)?

[alanschu]

I wouldn't be surprised if the MMO 'explains' what happened to Revan/Exile in the Unknown Regions to render a KOTOR 3 unnecessary.

 

 

I wouldn't be surprised either, though from what I remember reading, I think there's a fair bit of time difference between the two.

[alanschu]

I really enjoyed this video. It talks in large part about the ridiculous amount of voice over that will exist in the game (every line of dialogue is voiced).

 

 

http://www.swtor.com/media/trailers/video-documentary-3

 

 

 

Of the gameplay footage, I got to see a bit more of the Sith side before, so it's cool to see the stuff that plays out differently with the bounty hunter making the decisions.

[Albion72]

@Albion72

 

You are making some pretty big assumptions about this game and MMOs in general, like there are "always" role-playing servers. Admittedly, I have only played a few MMOs, none of which I liked, but also none of which have ever had role-playing servers (I might have liked them if they did). That concept may be unique to certain MMOs, but it is certainly not "always" available and there is absolutely no guarantee the TOR will have it at all.

 

The negative opinion of MMOs has less to do with the quality of the game itself and more to do with the all the baggage being an MMO brings with it. The game itself could be great, but being a MMO means certain basic flaws must be present. We've already covered the fact that every douchebag on the internet is invited to play the game with me, whether I want to play with them or not. How about the monthly fee for a game I already bought? BioWare is touting the story of this game as if you could play it single player, despite the fact that it is a MMO. Why in the world would I sign up for and pay a monthly fee for a single player game? What about the mindless grinding? I don't want to spend weeks killing random gizka and wamp rats, just so I can level up enough to do the next part of the story. This, more than anything else, is what makes me hate MMOs with a passion. They get frustratingly boring, I start to think "Why the hell am I paying for this?" then some l33t player steals the loot from my latest kill. The next day, I cancel my account then spend weeks berating myself for wasting money on yet another pointless game.

 

I hate to break it to you, but have you looked at any of the screenshots and artwork surrounding this game? It might as well be called Star Wars: World of Warcraft. Granted, some things have changed since the initial announcement, like the cartoonishly large lightsaber hilts, but this is already shaping up to be the WoW of the Star Wars universe. If they have SW fans doing the playtesting, from what I have seen so far, they are failing at their jobs miserably.

 

Interestingly enough every MMO that I've played has had Role-playing servers.

 

Yes there are idiots in MMOs but there are also ignore lists.

 

You are paying for continued updated content. Patches should be fairly regular adding more features and more things to do.

 

Its not a single-player game that's the point of MMO. You can play Solo, but there are lots of options for group activities too.

 

Screen shots/footage of the game is really old.... I'm pretty sure the game isn't even in Alpha Beta yet. Every game's graphics/engines are immensely different from final release. I've seen graphics updated greatly and some dumbed down to the point that you ask why they even did it.

[Albion72]

I wouldn't be surprised if the MMO 'explains' what happened to Revan/Exile in the Unknown Regions to render a KOTOR 3 unnecessary.

 

I doubt it. I don't think BioWare specifically wants to speak of the Exile. Maybe Revan. But I doubt they want to give away too much information about Revan as KOTOR is still a product and they probably won't mention the Exile that much since he was in KOTOR II which isn't their product. Besides MMO quests focus largely on the present tense, and things that you must do NOW so that something bad doesn't happen LATER.

 

But yes your above theory is possible, and if its a really long quest/conversation/explanation that is very detailed and satisfies my need to know what happens, then I'm fine with it.

[HoonDing]

I really enjoyed this video. It talks in large part about the ridiculous amount of voice over that will exist in the game (every line of dialogue is voiced).

 

 

http://www.swtor.com/media/trailers/video-documentary-3

 

 

 

Of the gameplay footage, I got to see a bit more of the Sith side before, so it's cool to see the stuff that plays out differently with the bounty hunter making the decisions.

Wow, that's impressive... I'm definitely going to give this game a try when it's out. If there's any MMO being able to kill World of Warcraft, it should be this one.

[kingofsquid]

[sigh]

[cogadh]

Interestingly enough every MMO that I've played has had Role-playing servers.

Like I said, they may exist in some, perhaps even most MMOs, but there is absolutely no guarantee that such a thing will exist with TOR

 

Yes there are idiots in MMOs but there are also ignore lists.

Which are only effective after an idiot has already ruined your current gameplay experience and only really prevent their chat from bugging you, it does nothing to stop their actions.

 

You are paying for continued updated content. Patches should be fairly regular adding more features and more things to do.

That may have been true in the past, but with single-player games offering DLC, both paid and for free, the monthly fee model for "updated content" is looking way outdated and is an incredible ripoff.

 

Its not a single-player game that's the point of MMO. You can play Solo, but there are lots of options for group activities too.

I understand that single player is not the point, but someone needs to explain that to BioWare who are touting the "single player-ability" of this game as if it is a good thing for a MMO and a positive feature of this game.

 

 

Screen shots/footage of the game is really old.... I'm pretty sure the game isn't even in Alpha Beta yet. Every game's graphics/engines are immensely different from final release. I've seen graphics updated greatly and some dumbed down to the point that you ask why they even did it.

It is totally understood that the game will very likely change as it develops and it has already changed some with each new bit of gameplay footage and screenshot they release. But, IMO (key phrase there), it is not getting any better, it is only getting different.

[alanschu]

Which are only effective after an idiot has already ruined your current gameplay experience and only really prevent their chat from bugging you, it does nothing to stop their actions.

 

I've played WoW which is apparently king of these actions. First you need to get someone interested in bothering you, which rarely seemed to be an issue for me. However, I've never had a hard time ignore them.

 

 

That may have been true in the past, but with single-player games offering DLC, both paid and for free, the monthly fee model for "updated content" is looking way outdated and is an incredible ripoff.

 

If you don't think it's worth it, then don't pay for it. It's as simple as that.

 

I understand that single player is not the point, but someone needs to explain that to BioWare who are touting the "single player-ability" of this game as if it is a good thing for a MMO and a positive feature of this game.

 

It's something different, and quite frankly, no one knows if it's going to work. The naysayers questioned WoW's ability to play through the game solo style, but hey...given the millions of subscribers, seems like that's what people wanted. The thing about WoW is it took people that didn't play MMOs before, and made them play MMOs. SWTOR could do the same for a different group of people that don't typically play MMOs.

[Rosbjerg]

If you don't think it's worth it, then don't pay for it. It's as simple as that.

 

It's an easy argument, problem is there isn't a service availabe which offers roughly the same game (a SW MMO) and doesn't have a monthly fee.. So I think it's a fairly valid point to be upset about pricing, since you have to skip the product entirely to avoid it, which is a shame. But that's the package deal as it stands today of course, I'm sure that Bioware and any other company would change it however, if enough people were unsatisfied.. So there's always merit in complaining imo .

[alanschu]

I'd like to go and see Europe and take in all of the history. Unfortunately there's no way for me to get to Europe and see and do all the things that I would like to do because it's too expensive.

 

 

I don't think it's a valid point to be upset about pricing. The people that design and publish a game are more than within their right to charge whatever they please for it, because there are a plethora of other forms of entertainment one can take part in. It's not like anyone is being denied some entertainment in their spare time because of this pricing mechanism.