The endgame stuff is really why I've decided just to skip the game for a year or two. Literally the only part of the game I'm interested in is the story (specifically class/companion stories) . I don't enjoy pvp or raiding instances even a little bit, so it's all about the questing and leveling for me (journey stuff, rather than destination stuff). Given how cost prohibitive it must be to produce not only quest arcs with branching pathways, but fully-voiced quest arcs with branching pathways, there's just no way BioWare could conceivably produce story content quickly enough to sustain me for long. Ultimately, I decided I'd be better off giving them a significant amount of time to add stuff, work out bugs and shed some population before I pick the game up at a later date.

Originally posted by VikingGamer

Dune was another great world. Not sure how well it would work with spice only coming from one planet and that planet being controlled by one group or family at a time usually but otherwise a great and huge environment to go after.

Dune was the first thing I thought of too, but I think the biggest problem with it is that the planet (Arrakis) was one big desert, and there's only so much you can do with that from a visual standpoint. Yes, you can have rock formations here, rolling dunes there, mountains here, salt flats there, but you're working with a very limited color palette in an environment whose primary descriptor is "featurelessness."

That would be difficult to pull off in anything other than a Farmville or text-based format, where expectations are much lower with the former, and entirely different with the latter. Subscription graphical MMO players, most of whom are already used to traversing ten vastly different environments in twenty minutes, would get sick of the brown and beige pretty quickly. Dune definitely has all the politics and conflict for a great MMO, but the stage it's set on would be a very, very tough sell.

The complete inability to personalize your ship (let alone pick the ship you wanted) was what disappointed me. I've never really been that into arcade/flight-sim stuff, but it's pretty sad when the disaster that is Star Trek Online vastly outshines your game in terms of ship customization. I hope that's something they not only can add, but will add (they've apparently stated that "they'd like to" at some point post-launch). Right now, it just feels like "Here's your mobile box 1.07; enjoy!"

I guess it's a better form of housing than some MMOs have, but only due to the fact that some MMOs don't have housing at all. "At least it's something" isn't really much of a tag line for commercials. The game has its strong points, but ships and space aren't among them right now.

Originally posted by CazNeerg

Originally posted by GMan3

To me, that is a sign of a well designed system, when doing what feels natural results in a balance.  Just like with most BioWare games, being purely light or purely dark in any of the TOR class stories would require a character to have some kind(s) of mental deficiency and/or disorder.

They do have a tendancy of encouraging (or at least rewarding) that mental deficiency, though. I love their games (as is evidenced by my avatar), but they've been tying persuasion choices to your morality meter for quite awhile now. In Mass Effect 2, they even went so far as to take away persuasion options you had enough morality for (whether good or bad) if you had any of the other type. No matter how many choices they give you, when they do things like that, they're providing active encouragement for taking all top responses or all bottom responses on the dialogue wheel. Yes, you can choose whatever you want, but BioWare hasn't historically been a fan of neutral diplomats.

"Wait, I let a bunch of colonists get blown up, watched with amusement as the Council's ship exploded, installed a corrupt politician in their place, and you're telling me I'm not 'evil enough for you' because I was nice to the person I was trying to seduce? Mmmmkay! Hey, what's that behind you?"  <bang bang>  "Don't worry, I'm sure those bullet wounds won't kill you - I had my gun on 'sort-of safety.'"

"The only difference is the fact you can choose from different eye colors, skin shades, and facial tattoos. The actual heads are identical. The same is true for hairstyles, again, with few exceptions."

I can't even begin to tell you how disappointing that is. I may be a living, breathing stereotype of a female gamer (we have plenty who don't care about avatars at all, I'm sure), but I really enjoy personalizing my character's appearance to the nth degree. It isn't "just fluff" to me, it's crucial. It's the image I'm sending out to everyone around me about how I see myself in the game world, perhaps even the real world. Is my character covered in tattoos, or is she wearing a business suit? Is she walking around in stilettos, or is she wearing steel-toed combat boots? Is she sporting crucifex earrings, or are they anarchy symbols? Does she wear heavy mascara, or does she go completely without makeup?

The list goes on and on, or it should. In this case, it apparently doesn't "go" very far at all. BioWare's recent single-player games are not too terrible when it comes to personalization; Dragon Age and Mass Effect both had multiple sliders for dozens of things. What's ironic about that is that individuality is less important in single-player games because your character only needs to differentiate herself from NPCs. In MMOs, you need to differentiate yourself from a lot more NPCs (the world's far larger) and  thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of players.

A major part of online gaming, particularly in the massively multiplayer genre, is socializing. Part of socialization is personal expression, and a part of personal expression in online gaming is through avatar appearance. Some people use their avatars as mobile trophy stands, some use them as expressions of themselves, some use them as expressions of how they'd like to be seen, and some just use them as expressions of who they think the character would be. The more you limit that, the less people will identify with their own characters (at least among players who identify with their characters at all), and that just can't be good for the game. Why make avatars your players "have to be" when you could give them the tools to make avatars they "want to be?"

In any case, I'd really hoped that the BioWare team had moved beyond the EQ1 "pick a head" template, which felt restrictive even a decade ago. I'm saddened to learn that's not the case in their first MMO project. Their stories will be wonderful, I'm sure, but they'd be a lot more wonderful for me if I actually liked the character they were happening to: mine.

Strangely, I find I'm in exactly the opposite position of the one described by the OP. With each passing year of MMO gaming, it feels like I have less and less in common with the people around me. It's to the point now where the only thing I share with the other players is the fact that I'm logged into the same game. If they made single-player subscription games that regularly updated content in a significant way, that's almost definitely the model I'd be seeking. What's especially odd about this is the fact that I'm practically a social butterfly in real life, with friends in a variety of cultures and professions; it's just the MMO-space that has me feeling like I'm alone in a crowd.

I'm not really a fan of 2D games, but I've been playing Glitch for about two weeks now, and this thing is a lot of fun if you're not the type who needs pulse-pounding action all the time. The environments are attractive (if simple), the crafts are fun, people tend to be unusually helpful, and TinySpeck is one of very few development studios that's managed to make a F2P model I can live with.

Will this game replace a traditional MMO in your life? Probably not. Considering you can play it on a smartphone and manage your skills from anything with Java capability, however, it makes for a wonderful side activity. Also, because the skill system works much like EVE's, you don't have to have your head in the game all the time if you want to make headway. Plunk yourself in every once in awhile, make some crepes, mine some ore, squeeze some chickens, and you'll never end up feeling like you're "falling behind." The game is just a friendly, casual, craft-centric MMO with a wonderfully weird sense of style.
 

"Generic Brown and Blood Shooter 5: Murder the Enemies of Freedom part II: This time it's personal!"

Classic. =)

 

Originally posted by cure01

Might I suggest Free Realms? its a browser game from Sony online entertainment. No questionable content and free to play. Lifetime subscription is $40 or $5 a month. Its colorful and easy on the system requirements. 

That was my thought, too. While Free Realms' payment scheme isn't to my taste, the game itself is a pretty good introductory course in MMOs. It has combat, but it's pretty cartoony and totally avoidable, it has lots of crafting mini-games, lots of quests that are easy to reach, racing, soccer, collections, guilds, pets, and a number of other things. It can be a very social game, but it has some very strict language filters in place. I'd say the game itself probably skews younger than 11, but that doesn't mean it can't be enjoyable (I had some fun with it while testing it).

Since it's "F2P," it's easy enough to try out. It's also a very small download. As I mentioned in the first paragraph, it's very cash-shoppy, but you don't have to spend money; they just bombard you with how much better your life would be if you did spend money at every possible opportunity. Teaching your son how to resist those temptations might actually be a valuable lesson in this day and age, since cash shops are becoming more and more prevalent in MMOs of all kinds.

Originally posted by seridur

Any info how many different quest lines will be and how they overlap? If none at all, then it means about 25h per class. That means that if I want to experience all of it I need many alts. I just hope these story quests will be challenging and interesting enough

Well, the 200-hour number was given by the President of EA (just Googled it =) in which he said: “I don’t pay much attention to that talk, I get a lot of questions from analysts and press about it. What I try and concentrate on is, is it a good game and is it ready to go? You look at a game that has 200 hours of gameplay for each of the six classes, and that doesn’t include the crafting, the raids, the multiplayer. It’s vast. It’s a gigantic game. And that costs money.”

They've also said that each class quest is 100% different from all the others; the only shared quests are general non-class quests (WoW style) that you do as filler. So, according to Frank Gibeau (EA President), it's 200 hours for each class, not divided between them; according to BioWare themselves, those 200 hours will have no crossover material. Of course, we've seen CEOs make claims about products that were more than a little incorrect in the past, so the 200-hour statement may or may not be accurate. It's possible BioWare confirmed that number somewhere, but I really haven't been pouring through blogs and BioWare forums, just reading the occasional article that gets posted here and at Massively, so I'm not terribly certain.

I haven't followed the game too closely, but I believe the class quests will be like KotOR (they've said around 200 hours worth per class, unless I'm mistaken), while the general quests you do between them will be like WoW, LotRO, etc. In one video demo, a designer said that they tried to keep the world as non-instanced and non-phased as they could, just using those techniques when it was necessary for the story or in situations where other players would have a seriously negative impact on your experiences.

I think it's pretty safe to say that you will see other players, you probably will need to buy and sell things from them or to them on an auction house, you'll definitely have to group with them if you want the best gear available at any point in the game, but that you won't need the best gear at any point (and won't be forced to speak to anybody) if your only goal is to play through the class quests. That said, a lot of the instanced group/raid scenarios are supposed to expand upon the stories being presented in the class quests (though not in a way that would block progress), so you'll miss out on some things you'd otherwise like to see if you keep to yourself all the time.

Originally posted by jonrd463

Regarding the world, is it pretty open a la Elder Scrolls? The reason I ask is that in the older gameplay demos from the gaming shows, the minimap shows what basically amounts to an outdoor corridor. I'd like to know if the player has the ability to pick a direction and just wander off the beaten path.

As far as I know, they only publically answered this in any detail for the first time today (though they've alluded to openness and Rolston's philosophy for "wandering in the weeds" before). They have a weekly Q&A on their forums, and here was what they said in this week's:

Q: Just how "open" is the world? I know it has been said you can stray off the path, and there are five distinct zones. But how will the transition between these zones take place? Is it Elder Scrolls level "If you can see it, you can go to it?" (Within reason) – By Outlander

A: The world of Reckoning is huge, and at any point you can decide to veer off the main roads or take a break from the main quest. We strongly encourage it! The main quest does a good job of giving you a tour of the world, but it only touches on the depth and breadth of the different regions. A lot of care went into giving those explorers out there a vast world to roam and fight through. There are sweeping plains and dense forests that are stocked full of side content, but there’s also a great deal to be found from just free exploration. You might uncover some of our secret nooks and crannies that are hiding some of the best loot in the game, or even extra bits of lore.

There are load screens between the five biomes for technical reasons, but you can spend real-world days exploring the massive amounts of content of each one. There are also over a hundred and twenty hand-crafted dungeons to explore.

All in all, you could spend countless hours just wandering the world of Reckoning and uncovering its secrets. Please tell us what you find! – By Colin "Hugohan" Campbell, Lead World Designer

I'm not sure a Game of Thrones rpg is actually necessary. CollegeHumor.com already covered what it would look like pretty well: http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6579356/game-of-thrones-rpg

Originally posted by travamars

DYNAMIC.....

Seems that DYNAMIC gets said with every game review these days. What 3 times in that very short review.

Can you go into detail and explain what is so DYNAMIC about the combat and other features you mentioned? Or at least give me your definition of what DYNAMIC means when refered to a game?

I can expand on that. The combat is combo and condition-based. For example, if you block with your shield and then attack with your sword, you do a different move than if you swing your sword three times. You can also switch weapons on the fly, each of which has a different set of combo/reactive effects. It's all pretty intuitive, too; there are no button combos to memorize, it's all timing.

EDIT: That said, they've stated multiple times that it's very much an RPG, not an action game. Their goal was to make it feel very fluid and exciting, but easy to pick up and play for anyone who's interested in doing so. There are some things more "actiony" than your typical RPGs (rolling/teleporting out of the way of attacks), but stats and equipment still play a huge role in how well you do.

@Garrett:

I'd be really interested in seeing a review of the PC controls as the game gets closer to launch and they have more of a chance to finalize said controls. So far, all of the game-play footage and reviews I've seen have been of the Xbox version. I greatly prefer playing on the PC, but only if the controls are easy and intuitive (which isn't always the case with multiplatform games).

My account got hacked after a period of inactivity, too (I'm a lifetimer, but hadn't logged in for over two months). Some of my guild members noticed my character logging on, but that it didn't respond to hails. Seeing that it was in my housing development, they went there and witnessed the character being stripped of its equipment. They then reported it, and the account was banned.

I contacted customer support by email and got some instructions involving running some recommend antispyware/antivirus programs (all of which I used weekly anyway) and changing all of my passwords, which I did. I never did end up contacting them further to get the account unbanned, though. I just couldn't bear going back and trying to replace the lost gear, special housing decorations, etc.

I go back to MUDs every once in awhile, though I think it's easier for those of us who actually spent time with them in their early days than it is for people who've never played them before (the lack of graphics is a pretty tall hurdle). The main advantages MUDs have over MMOs are tighter communities due to smaller population numbers (everyone knows everyone) and developers who do what they do out of love for the game rather than financial obligation. Both of those are really refreshing palate cleansers after bad MMO experiences. Then again, MUD developers don't have anywhere near the amount of time or manpower AAA MMOs do, so change occurs at a glacially slow pace, if at all.

For my MUD recommendation, I'd say Project Bob (I know, the name's terrible) is probably the best I've played, and I've played hundreds. That's based on my own standards and expectations, though. It has things I really care about, like essentially endless levels and a really deep alternate advancement system, housing, pets, optional quests, random events, characters that are skill-based rather than class-based, and one of the most detailed loot/crafting systems I've ever seen in a MUD. It's not hugely populated, though, nor is it really a roleplaying MUD. It's mostly a progression-based game with lots of things to keep you busy.

A fun fact mentioned in the PAX East videos for the game, the voice actor that plays the gnomish scholar at the Well of Souls (your contact in rebirth) is Jim Cummings, the same person who voiced Minsc in Baldur's Gate. "Go for the eyes, Boo! Go for the eyes!"

I was really hoping the new instances were going to be a viable endgame path for soloers (I know, I know, we're all evil and need to be destroyed), but after watching several videos of solo players in full raid gear running them, that just doesn't seem to be the case. You pretty much need either a second player or, as mentioned in the article, an "ultra-buffed" character. Even in raid gear, it wasn't at all uncommon for people to die several times.

Essentially, this move to make the story more accessible to everyone still isn't making it accessible to soloers. If you want to run them alone, you'll have to get geared up in raids first, which seems counterintuitive.

Rift isn't the game for me, but the bit stating "Multi-month subscribers earn all the rewards from their game time up front" is quite clever. I'm sure it'll push some people up a subscription category or two.