Originally posted by vmoped

We could just wait until Bioware releases more information about the gameplay, or better yet, just wait for the game to come out rather than all this speculation, but that would defy the norm on this site now wouldn't it?

Yes. You're right. No one must hope or think. Because you can't, the rest of us mustn't.
 

Originally posted by FreddyNoNose

Originally posted by Czzarre

Solo or not, I know there are a lot of players  looking to this game to fill the gap SWG left in their hearts.

 

TOR is not SWG2!

Unless you work for LA or Bioware, your guess is as moronic as the rest of ours.

Originally posted by Abraxos

 ...What is the subscription fee for if not to play with other people?

Updates. Instead of buying KotOR 1, then KotOR 2, then KotOR 3, you buy the Old Republic Online, pay your monthly fee, and let the story come to you. Of course, I don't really believe it's going to be as solo-oriented as the specualtion would have you believe. That's too narrow a target market for the game. MMOs are big business, and they'll want to get as many gamers playing as they can. That means solo content, and it also means group content. Whether or not they're able to make both groups happy is anyone's guess (they'd be the first), but I think the average gamer lies somewhere between the two extremes, and they're really the people most MMOs are after. They're the independent voters of online gaming.

Originally posted by Jenuviel

Originally posted by Abraxos

 ...What is the subscription fee for if not to play with other people?

 

Updates. Instead of buying KotOR 1, then KotOR 2, then KotOR 3, you buy the Old Republic Online, pay your monthly fee, and let the story come to you. Of course, I don't really believe it's going to be as solo-oriented as the specualtion would have you believe. That's too narrow a target market for the game. MMOs are big business, and they'll want to get as many gamers playing as they can. That means solo content, and it also means group content. Whether or not they're able to make both groups happy is anyone's guess (they'd be the first), but I think the average gamer lies somewhere between the two extremes, and they're really the people most MMOs are after. They're the independent voters of online gaming.

It is an interesting concept though.

A single player RPG online - and the only time you see other people is for trading your loot or socialising.

Pretty much how I play WoW now.

Quite funny how according to these forums tor went from being a sandbox to full pup to no solo game. You'd think people would get tired of speculation liek crazy after the failure that aoc and df were.

Originally posted by hubertgrove

Originally posted by Jenuviel

Originally posted by Abraxos

 ...What is the subscription fee for if not to play with other people?

 

Updates. Instead of buying KotOR 1, then KotOR 2, then KotOR 3, you buy the Old Republic Online, pay your monthly fee, and let the story come to you. Of course, I don't really believe it's going to be as solo-oriented as the specualtion would have you believe. That's too narrow a target market for the game. MMOs are big business, and they'll want to get as many gamers playing as they can. That means solo content, and it also means group content. Whether or not they're able to make both groups happy is anyone's guess (they'd be the first), but I think the average gamer lies somewhere between the two extremes, and they're really the people most MMOs are after. They're the independent voters of online gaming.

 

It is an interesting concept though.

A single player RPG online - and the only time you see other people is for trading your loot or socialising.

Pretty much how I play WoW now.

I actually was pitching the idea of a KotOR single-player subscription service on the boards here a couple of years ago in one of those "Solo versus Grouping" threads that pop up every day (I'm sucked into those things like dog hair into a vacuum cleaner), and that was before I even knew BioWare was working on an MMO. I'd just finished KotOR 2, and I really wanted to know what happened to Revan. I thought, "How great would it be if I could just download the next chapter as soon as they finished it?"

The idea was basically an alternate revenue model for singleplayer games. The majority of the staff would be writers, since art assets designed for the core game (see KotOR, KotOR 2) could be recycled over and over again. You buy the base game, then pay to play through an ongoing epic story. Since development  would largely take the form of story progression and branching dialogue (all of it based around a single protagonist), it would theoretically be much easier and faster to produce.

We're not going to see anything like that with TOR, but I agree it's an interesting idea. I think TOR is going to be more like current MMOs than it is unlike them, but that's fine too. In my experience, there are two statements that have been true in just about every MMO I've played:

1) The best aspect of every MMO is its playerbase.

2) The worst aspect of every MMO is its playerbase.

You take the good with the bad.

EDIT: Found that original thread: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/1706414#1706414

What's stunning is that we haven't seen a single-player RPG based on the subscription model of MMOs yet; sell the box, then charge for continuing content updates. That seems like such an obvious thing to market. Not only do you get the box sales, you also get ongoing income based on the same engine. You use the same programming, largely the same art assets. All you really need are writers and a delivery method for people to download the content updates, which would actually require far less bandwidth than MMOs because people wouldn't be connected during their play, just during their download.

When I finished the second Knights of the Old Republic game, I wanted to see where the story went. I wanted my character to go out there and find Revan. I wanted to make more of those intriguing morality-based decisions that I first ran into in the Baldur's Gate series, those ethical choices I continued to love in KotOR and Jade Empire. I wanted to continue being at the center of that story. I would've paid $14.95 a month for that opportunity.

MMOs are out there when I want to group with people, but that's just not what I want to do all the time. I have to believe there are other people like me who'd enjoy a continuation of their favorite singleplayer RPGs, and would be willing to pay for it monthly rather than waiting two years for the sequel. Of course, there's also money to be made from that sequel. Instead of calling it a sequel, though, you call it an expansion pack. The business wins, the consumer wins. It seems so obvious to me, that I'm baffled nobody's tried it yet.

Originally posted by hubertgrove

Originally posted by FreddyNoNose

Originally posted by Czzarre

Solo or not, I know there are a lot of players  looking to this game to fill the gap SWG left in their hearts.

 

TOR is not SWG2!

 

Unless you work for LA or Bioware, your guess is as moronic as the rest of ours.

It isn't really a guess since the developers have basically said it won't be.  The focus is on making the game a 'heroic' (HEROIC!!!!12) Star Wars 'experience'.  It has been said by folks from LEC and BioWare that they don't view crafting as a 'heroic' (HEROIC!!!!12) activity, and I doubt they will find most of the social aspects of MMOs to be very 'heroic' (HEROIC!!!!12).  We also know the game is going to have a class and level based character progression system.  I'm interested in the combat system, since I really hope they don't go with a horrible third person shooter system that has died in every attempt in MMOs so far.

TOR will also be primarily based on directed content.  The main path to advancement will be quests.  It isn't going to be an open sandbox world.  This will of course result in TOR have another major difference from SWG, it will be much more of a Star Wars game than SWG has ever been.

If you're looking for a open world sandbox MMO to replace SWG, TOR won't be it.  If you're looking for a Star Wars MMO that doesn't completely suck to replace SWG, then TOR has the potential to do that (it has a very good chance of being a Star Wars MMO that doesn't completely suck, which is something that current abomination from SOE cannot claim to be).

TOR will not be SWG 2, but that doesn't mean it will be a bad game, or won't be an acceptible replacement for SWG for many people.  The folks who are holding out for the next big open sandbox MMO will have to look elsewhere.  The most likely candidates will be Blizzard's next MMO (the folks at Blizzard have stated that they have already made WoW and don't intend to do it again) or from the studio created by Bethesda's parent company, since that MMO will likely be based on the Elder Scrolls which are known to be open sandbox single player games.

The OP didn't do his research very well.

You mentioned earlier that you don't want players to need to go out and recruit a bunch of other players to take down one monster. How do you balance an MMO so that you're still able to be a bad ass in single player but also have that sort of multiplayer experience that so many MMOs provide?

James: One of the things we've been doing is that we're making sure that when we're building content we have different representatives of the different play styles. Whenever we're doing design discussions or implementing a system, we have the different player types involved. There's the solo player type that hates other players and is very anti-social...

BioWare is creating their game with all play styles in mind.
It's funny, because there are a bunch of players like this in WoW where they don't like to hang around with other players but love to show off all the cool stuff that they have.

Then there are the players that like to adventure with their buddies. They have their own group of friends, and they just like to adventure with those players all the time.

Then there are players that like to join guilds and are social butterflies and like to adventure with people from their guild. They like to be part of these big huge groups that go out and play in major events like raids.

We want to take all those players and make sure that each of those player types has fun in our game. I can't go into details about all the systems, but we have made sure that those player types are thought about when we're building the game.

www.tentonhammer.com/node/47133

Something for everyone!!!! So it's not gonna be just like SWG precu  where most content you can pretty much solo, or like EQ2 (past 30)  where it's all about gear and group rading. It will have something for everyone.

It will be sort of like KOTOR online? Well gee, what a shocking announcement! I would never have guessed that The Old Republic which is being made by the same company that brought Knights of the Old Republic would be like Knights of the Old Republic online. Next thing you'll tell me is that we can play as jedi along with hundreds of others. And I was so hoping for a game that would just  throw me in the middle of nowhere and say "Now go play."

/sarcasm off

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

I've looked at the features in The Old Republic, and I just don't see a grouping game in there. The Old Republic is heavily quest based.

Not only that, but the devs are actually going to encourage you to read the quest dialog. Why? Because it makes a difference in your character.

Most games have FedEx quests or Kill X quests. But the dialog doesn't matter, other than where do I take the item to, or how many do I need to kill? Everythign else is just fluff that doesn't make any differnce, because it won't change anything in the game, not the game world, not your character. Kill X because...anything after because will not affect your character.

But questing isn't that much of a group thing, UNLESS you have a quest you can't do solo, because you can't kill X without a group. Why? Because reading quest dialog is more of a solo thing than a group thing. Maybe I read faster or slower than you, maybe I want to read it twice, you want to skim the dialog. Maybe you read it already....etc.

But, will there be a lot of quests you can't accomplish solo? I doubt it because the other feature is Henchmen. You can basically hire an NPC to do your quests with you. It's sort of like playing Knights of the Old Republic where you get a bunch of NPC's to boss around. So why would you need other players, or grouping?

Still might be a fun game I suppose. Sort of like KOTOR online. I guess you can ask other players stuff, maybe trade, or just chat.

The game is not even in Alpha Testing hell its not even passed the idea stage and your wondering if you can either group hunt and solo hunt? Arent you jumping the gun a little there?

Originally posted by vmoped

We could just wait until Bioware releases more information about the gameplay, or better yet, just wait for the game to come out rather than all this speculation, but that would defy the norm on this site now wouldn't it?

Or we could just do a little reading and see what actually will be in game besides reading disengenous threads with misleading titles and saying the game will suck based off of that lie. But that would defy the norm on this site as well.