I agree with Loke. The base mechanics of MMOGs have barely changed in 13 years.

There's a reason GW2 gets every 'best of show' award at every game convention they attend, and 'most anticipated' from every MMOG website over the past few years. For years everyone has been waiting for the one MMOG that will bring the genre forward and amongst a slurry of WoW clones that never seem to end, Guild Wars 2 is a beacon of light in a maelstrom of sameness.

I fully believe that GW2 will change the face of MMOGs to the extent that WoW did and EQ did before that. That, in the next several years, we'll stop seeing WoW clones and start seeing GW2 clones. I can all but guarantee that Titan (which is heavily rumored to be casual based), will have dynamic content.

In the end Guild Wars 2 is the only themepark MMOG on the near future that is trying to radically evolve the MMOG genre and from everything we've seen, Anet has the budget, the raw talent and the love and dedication to their IP to pull it off. When I say talent, I mean best in the industry talent. Just take a look at their award winning concept art!

That doesn't mean I personally won't try other MMOGs. TSW is from my favorite MMOG developer. Not only is Funcom under a new head but the lead on TSW is also the guy behind two of the best adventure games ever made; The Longest Journey and Dreamfall.

Archage may turn into something interesting but right now all I see is an over hyped version of the same uber generic grindfest that is the predominant asian MMOGs released in the past decade.

Likewise Planetside 2 is looking very promising and if greedy SOE doesn't charge a monthly fee (or if it's microtransactions based, it isn't pay to win), it'll be on my list of must buy games as fast as you can say 'Vanu Sovereignty FTW!'.

And of course we have the World of Darkness MMOG on the horizon, which primises to be one world, totally open, where the players run everything. You can be a normal human and other players can turn you, and the players themselves will decide the city leaders, who the Prince will be. Fighting between the Camarilla and Sabbat. It will be an ingrossing and heavily RP'd game the likes of which haven't been seen since UO!

So I think the MMOG genre is on an upswing. There are a number of games to look forward to and our young genre (and greedy publishers) are quickly realizing that an MMOG you don't put a lot of money behind, and the heart and soul of the developers behind, is just a losing prospect. So many companies have dived into the genre and produced utter failures that I really think that MMOGs will become better for it.

I didn't realize this from the few beta weekends I was in but the worlds are relatively small, linear and easy to get around in the early planets for a reason. The base movement speed is rather slow, and even with things like smugglers sprint if can feel like a crawl. But once you hit 25 or so and get a speeder the planets really start to open up.

And frankly if you cant afford a speeder by Tatooine, it's your own fault.

Originally posted by h0urg1ass

 

No, that's a terrible anaology.  It's like going into a vegetarian sandwich shop and every sandwich on the menu is lettuce and rye with a different name.

Some of us are sick of eating lettuce on rye every meal, and calling it "le lettuce au rye" doesn't change the fact that it's still lettuce on rye.  I want to walk into the vegetarian sandwich shop and see lettuce on rye, tomato on sourdough, tofu burger on wheat and lots of options.  Not the same thing renamed time and time again.

LMAO that is a fantastic analogy of what is wrong with themepark MMOGs these days. They are all lettice on rye with different names. TOR does nothing to change that fact besides things like companions and that you listen to people talk instead of reading a block of text.

For me, GW2 is the vegetarian restaurant that finally realized tomato on sourdough could be just as good as lettuce on rye, if not better.

Originally posted by holifeet

Hehe, how does this extremely negative review of the game get 10 pages of replies and my well thought out post gets no replies? I took ages over my review and it's dropped to page 4 with no replies in less than half a day. Anyway.

As for this guy's review, well I'm not even sure he played the same game as I played this weekend. I don't remember being asked to kill a bajillion of something. I don't even remember being asked to kill 50 of something. I thought Bioware handled the questing very nicely. Nothing I was asked to do ever came across as a kill 5 or fetch 5 type of quest that is so familar in a dozen dozen MMOs. There were instructions to kill 10 of something but it was an optional add on and you were nevr required to do so. I actually found that I was fullfilling those tasks easily in the course of reaching my story based objectives.

Story based is exactly what the questing in SWTOR was. It was like one big epic quest that started at level 1 and will finish at whatever level SWTOR calls max. I always felt like I was doing something to further my character.

Ok in some ways I find myself wishing that SWTOR was as open as SWG, but I've barely scratched the surface of the crafting. I have a feel it can be as much a part of my character as it was for my SWG time. The world is perhaps not as open as what I remember in SWG, and there is certainly no housing or player cities. There is your ship though, but I haven't gotten that far in beta.

I think I saw someone hit the nail on the head earlier when they said this is a sandbox loving guy after a game to satisfy his needs. He's looking in the wrong place because I don't think Bioware have ever suggested they are making a seriously open game. I don't really like the terms sandbox and themepark because there is far too much overlap in the genre to really classify so narrowly. If I had to put SWTOR in a category it wouldn't be sandbox though. Very few games would be sandbox, or especially the depth of sandbox that the OP is after. He should perhaps be playing something such as Xsyon. Yes, I know it's a poor game with a small audience, but that's often what you get for such a narrow frame of wants from a game.

He certainly shouldn't be coming here and listing a whole page of complaints that a game doesn't have what he wants when that game never really appeared to be likely to provide that. It's like buying a sandwich from a vegetarian cafe and asking why they don't have ham. You'll get told you've come to the wrong place. At least he was constructive, even if he was angry, but that's besides the point in his case.

Did you get to coruscant with a republic char? Because the 'bonus' missions on there (and every planet thereafter) are outragous and do boil down to 'kill 60 more of x enemy'. It's called a 'bonus' mission but you have to do them or you fall behind the leveling curve in your story if you don't. Also past level 20 your personal story goes dramatically into the background. Where as the first 20 odd levels it's about 4/1 missions/story missions but after that it becomes much less important. You can do dozens of missions between every single story mission. It kinda sucks. I really enjoy the story but after 20 it almost becomes the games background.

To the OP:

----> That way to Guild Wars 2. The Themepark game that is actually trying to move the themepark MMOG out of the darkages that is the WoW paradigm. Sure it still has the look and feel of the themepark (levels, classes) but besides those it is finally bringing freedom and choice to the themepark MMOG.

Is it just me or is the Charr at the top of the article wearing a Mesmer mask? It could be a Ritualist one as I don't see eye slits but the Ritualist ones cover the entire head in GW1 so.. it could be a bit of a hint!

Having new and rotating maps might be nice, but I don't know if just one would get boring, especially if they are big and varied.. I mean DAoC only had one 'RvRvR' map (well three wings) and it's PvP stayed exciting for years.

I also wonder if after each 2 week battle if everything will reset. Considering guilds can capture and control keeps and such, if you don't keep them until another guild on another server raids it. I would hope a guild that successfully captures a keep or any other strategic location would be able to keep it, and have to defend it until it is captured. Perhaps not the stuff in each server's area, but any capturable areas in the center map.

Still we know so little about WvWvW that how things really work could be far more interesting then anything we can think of.

My old guild is ready. We formed in 2002 in Anarchy Online and this will be the first MMOG in years that more than five or six of us are in the same game on the same server. We've got about 40 eager members, and most have already preordered lol. I myself still have some reservations about the game. I'm hoping it's different enough from the WoW paradigm to hold my interest for a time. I'm one of those folks who is really quite 'over' the WoW style themepark. But still, it's rather exciting to have so many old and new guildies all in one place again. :D

I kind of agree with him on many points. Most specifically that Bioware took star wars and tried to mold it's classes to WoW.. and in essence, D&D. It completely breaks continuity that Consular's use a lightsaber staff, and it's true the ONLY reason they do is because mages use staves. I mean fuck the ranged dps 'advanced class' was even called Wizard until they changed the name.

The game should be based upon KotoR/Star Wars: Saga Edition (the latest and greatest starwars PnP game) and let characters choose a base class and build their own character off that. But no.. this game had to try and dominate WoW by emulating WoW as closely as possible. And that meant forcing Star Wars classes into a D&D emulating, WoW copying system.

And please don't take this post as a 'The Old Republic is WoW!' reply. It's not like I'm not hotly anticipating the game but I can see the flaws in it and still want the game ya know. I just think this guy is right, on many levels.

Originally posted by channel84

Originally posted by Aadien

I still think GW2 will not meet up to what people think. I think it will have a huge first few months the just drop like crazy

er...u mean the subs?

lmao

Originally posted by Shoju

Originally posted by Fion

You can teleport anywhere in the game world in an instant. Open map.. click an icon.. your there. Just like Guild Wars 1. That makes mounts completely pointless.

No, you can't teleport anywhere in the game world.  You can only teleport to fixed waypoints that you have unlocked by previously visiting.  Teleporting doesn't cover the tracts of land inbetween waypoints or areas that you haven't visited yet.  Those areas you still have to run through.

Your right. But do you ever do that on a mount? No, you rush past it all (especially if your flying), skip tuns of areas to explore because your entire goal is to get from A to B on a mount. Thus, I don't want mounts. The runspeed in the game is above the crawl of WoW and other MMOGs. That's good enough for me.

You can teleport anywhere in the game world in an instant. Open map.. click an icon.. your there. Just like Guild Wars 1. That makes mounts completely pointless. The only other reason to want mounts is to show off, and that again, is pointless.

Originally posted by VirusDancer

Balanced in PvP... but what about PvE?  They had stated that there would be a greater emphasis on gear in GW2 compared to GW1...but that it would still be balanced for PvP.  That still leaves the door open for PvE.

There will be a greater enphasis on gear, just becuase of all the WoW kids who cry like babies when their gear doesn't give them bigger e-peens.

But that's besides the point, have you ever looked at the PvP gear, or looked at the mid-high PvE gear in videos from Gamescom, etc? The bonuses buff one or more of the four attritubes you can put points into and even then it's not by all that much. Gear in GW1 meant very little, gear in GW2 means more.. but compared to like WoW, it's still small beans.

Originally posted by Rusty715

So instead of a monthly fee (which some feel is uneeded to support a game) they add a Cash Shop.  Why? Is it needed? Or is it just a different way of getting what they miss out on with a sub fee? Players are going to pay one way or the other.  Some just prefer an upfront sub fee as opposed to a stealthy cash shop.

As said two dozen times in this thread, the cash shop does not sell 'neccessary' items for the game. It's not like LotRO where you can play to a certain level and then have the buy the next, or buy the 'dungeon pack' to do the new content, etc. It'll contain casual items, costumes, possibly xp-potions or story-missions that aren't required but might be fun to buy and do on the side.

Trust me, when you play an MMOG that was built from the ground up to not charge you for anything unless you want to, it's an entirely different experience. Guild Wars 1 is evidense of that. So don't worry, you won't ever 'HAVE' to buy anything from the cash shop. It's all optional.

It's kind of funny to see all these replies from people who cant fathom an AAA MMOG without a monthly fee or Pay to Win. We've all been so brainwashed. Bandwidth costs are in the basement these days, so that doesn't count shit in your monthly fee. Paying for the live team to release a content patch once a year (WoW anyone?) isn't that expensive because developers get payed 'way' less than most poeple think. I mean WoW rakes in tens of millions of dolors a month less than 1% of that goes to paying for bandwidth and for the developers. The rest lines the pockets of the company managers and Activision. Hell Blizzard could probably use some of the wacky accounting that the movie bizz does to show they make no profit at all. And that doesn't even include the millions they make from THIER cash shop.

Yea I don't think Anet would go the Pay to Win route. Not that NCSoft doesn't want that of course. The more money the better to them. It's aways the suits who care about pulling in the big bucks while they pay the develoeprs $35k a year for 75 hour, 6 dya work weeks, with a nice little bonus of about 10% of their income as a bonus on a successful game.

I know how you feel. It's a desert right now over at GuildWars2Guru lol. There hasn't been an interesting new thread in a month (accept the dozen of 'no raids = sucks!' threads lol) and I check the dev tracker every day and we generally see one dev post a week or so, and it's little reply about some award or to correct a blog post.. etc.

We have Beta announcement coming at or around the new year (Colin let that slip during Gamescom) and final class reveal 'by the end of the year'. It's almost November so I think really by mid december we'll see the final class. I cant wait!  Both for that news and for the forums to stop chugging like a train through quciksand.

Edit: If your looking for something to read, check the News section of the guru forums. There's a couple really good blog writeups that have been posted in the last few days. And go watch Tales of Tyria, a solid new vblog. It's not new information, but solid discussion on what we do know and how they might implement what we don't.

This is desperation there is no denying. They would 'never' make such an offer in the hayday of WoW. Blizzard has been losing subscribers hand over fist and their new expansion has recieved the most tepid resonse of any blizzard game, ever. On top that they have 'massive' competition in The Old Republic, an MMOG with the money behind it that it's content filled, polished and will absolutely have great retention. Then there's Guild Wars 2 coming next year and that looks absolutely fantastic, even in Alpha.

This offer will help pad their subscriptions for the next year, that's long enough for them to get the next expansion out, and make some signficiant changes to it between now and then to try and make it more appealing to the 1/2 of subscribers who have no interest in it right now.

So yea, Blizzard is worried and they have been for a year now. They are devoid of any more ideas, and trying to expand the game to a young audience. Titan is heavily rumored to be a very casual MMOG (how else could they do an MMOG that will 'not' compete with WoW itself?). FIrst they make WoW partly free and then offer a goodies deal that the hardcore fans will NOT turn down, that makes sure to pad their subscription numbers for another year.

The evidense is everywhere people. It's rather obvious.