HOLY SHIT!. NO!

Looks like they are trying to get the "Failure of the Millennium"-Award... And they'll get it with MT.

HOW STUPID CAN ONE COMPANY BE?!

If they go MT I'm out. Would be an a really awesome fail just made for another column at mmorpg.com "the biggest preventable fails in MMO history"

Awww they can't be THAT stupid...

...I hope.

If it's RMT I will not buy or play it. 

Just my 2ct for today.

...well maybe more like 1ct.

A good article! (as opposed to Danas yesterday i might add...)

I would like to throw in an idea: the *complete* ignore

What do I mean by that? Well...

It really isn't enough to have an unlimited ignore - people can still grieve you by hopping around etc. So... make them disappear. That's right, make them vanish COMPLETELY from my game. Better still: let me do that per hotkey rather than havin to type in a line.

In Addition to that: Make a /completeignore for whole friends and even whole guilds. If my friend/matey decides he sees someone breaking his/her immersion... let me just take over his list so i don't have to put up with that someone myself...

my 2 ct for today.

Originally posted by ericbelser

I have to say that was an exceptionally misinformed and unenlightened article.

I prefer to play on "RP" servers, not because of any real expectation of roleplaying - nor to "annoy" roleplayers. I play on them because they tend to have better enforced social guide lines on chat, naming conventions and behavior.

It's not all about bad acting lessons, shakespearian accents or drama queens. It's about respecting the intended uses of chat channels and tiny little things like not being allowed to deliberately break the immersion of someone elses playing time. I couldn't care less what you say or how you say it in an OOC channel, guild chat or a private convo; because I can choose to not be listening to them. However, I find having to listen to some moron named N33D5D0P3 talk about Michel Jackson in zone wide general chat to be really annoying.

So, no they aren't perfect and they really aren't about rigidly enforced "roleplaying"...but I find RP servers to be a better social environment than most MMO servers, simply because they actually allow for the enforcement of some basic rules of conduct and consideration.

This. Exactly my point.

...especially the part about "exceptionally misinformed and unenlightened, Dana.

Originally posted by Rydeson

     I've read and watched many interviews and post by Bioware, and this game is nothing more then KOTOR 3 + internet..  The storyline choice bologna mixed in with online interaction makes things impossible, or illogical..  I"ve read and heard how one starting quest is "killing the captain" or not to kill him, and how those type of choices determine your character as you progress thru what I call a single player RPG.. Let me give you a simple example..  I killed the captain, however my friend did not early on in the game.. I get to a point where a relative or friend of the captain seeks REVENGE upon me.. Does this mean my friend is unable to help me?  Afterall, he's friendly with the capt's friends and family.. whereas I'm hated..  If my friend helps me in the fight, he then should ALSO become hated by the friends and family as well..  SO MUCH about making choices early on?  OR will my confrontation with the family be instanced where my friend cant' come with me.. OR.. even worse.. my friend does help me, yet takes NO faction hit in killing the capt's friend or family..  Meaning that Bioware conviently IGNORES the storyline in sake of grouping with no recource..  Interesting ..

     Personally, I see this is nothing more then RENTING KoTOR 3 monthly to play multiple toons with a lil online mmo tossed in to keep you guessing if it's a mmo or not.. However I think I might re-label it as SWG 2.. Another Star Wars blunder where the game doesn't meet expectations of what the market wants..  I'm still trying to figure out how a person that was LEAD screw up at SOE-Austin (aka SWG)  got the Co-GM spot at Bioware.. I guess it's all about the almighty dollar.. Should we make a KoTOR 3 and charge $59.95 that can be played on the PC, Xbox and PS3?  or should we make the game a lil bigger, add in some mmo stuff (but not much) and charge the same $59.95 plus $14.95 a MONTH every month after.. hmmmmm Lets go with the extended money game.. LOL I suspect this game fails within 2 years after release, but who cares..

 

 

 I HOPE you are wrong, but then again I THINK you are right.

I completely agree with most of what is said in the article but not with the conclusion

[Quote]

There is hope, though. As much as I’d like to take credit for all this, it’s clear many others have come to this conclusion sooner (and over the course of a lot less columns). The best looking games at E3 took this to heart. Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic looks a heck of a lot like a cooperative single-player RPG. The narrative seems, at a glance, to be a large part of the focus. While other exciting games like All Points Bulletin and Global Agenda are much more focused on character parity and unlockable content.

[/Quote]

It is paradox that one should seek the core mechanics single player RPGs as an improvement to the MMORPG, because these mechanics are specialized to some extend on beeing... single player. 

When people want to buy an MMO, the usually do not want a single player game with a little global chat box.  Story is important, and immersion ist, too - but if you take on the Guild Wars-type of instanced storytelling, then you are bound to fail. GW did not live of the story, but of PvP, and no matter how good the story may turn out to be... if you took the same story into an single player game, it would still work better - because the expectation towards an MMO are quite different from that of an single player game.

Basically we are speaking immersion ( = instancing content to create a good storyline) vs. interaction here, and if people buy an MMO they are seeking some form of interaction (may it be socializing or of competetive nature), as opposed to someone buying an offline game.

Finding an satisfying way to combine interaction and immersion ( = "storytelling as a 4th pillar") is the real problem MMO's face today... and i do not believe instancing cn be a valid tool to achieve it. The only i can think of is the use of GM's to run live events, but that is way too expensive to do in a bigger MMO

I am waiting for SW:TOR as much as the next guy and i will buy it and play it, but unless Bioware's got an ace up it's sleeve i think they will fail on the long run.

Erm. Just my 2ct for today.

I solo a lot and I've tried

...the shaman - funnyand levels ok until 20, but then your DPS goes doooown und you become a fullgrown healer. So not the best PvE-solo-class around. Scenarios tend to be fun and give heavy renown.

...the Black Orc - Tank. Lots of fun, not very complicated, solos ok but at some point over 20 your dmg just makes levelling kind of slow.

...Marauder - does a lot of dmg, levels good but was not my style

...Squigherder - is pretty ok for PvE, levels ok even solo.

...Magus - my choice right now, levels like Hell when demonspecced and pvpwise very good. Not the class for everyone but I like it

Hope that helped.

A failure? It's got 400.000 Subscribers the day it hit the shelves ...

I don't play it either but the fact that you do not like it, OP, does not make it a failure...

preace.

Yeah... agreed... since most game mechanics will be the same, lokks are very similar with polished up graphics... I wonder when WoW will overhaul it's graphic engine the way EVE did and AO will.

A fight between WoW and WAR would be interesting to watch since both "teams" will be motivated to geive their best to get to the paying customer... but i think WAR will have a hard time challenging the 11.000.000-titan World of Warcraft.

Sadly. A darker design would have been my favourite too.

Well to be honest i just read this thread out of boredom, but

"Now relax and enjoy life."

does seem a bit arrogant in face of somebody who just apologized honestly. Just my 2 cents for today, do not bother answering i will not be there to read it (that's not meant mean but as i said i read this out of boredom)

Peace Dudes.

Well i got some issues with that retarded fileplanet-dl too...

Yesterday morning i started DL, got kicked out of DL because of standby over night, now i'm trying to get back into DL but fileplanet tells me that it's about 20 mins... since 8 am ^^). Now i'm downloading the generalbeta at pretty slow speed per torrent as i've read in a forum that you can fix it to log into fileplanet beta...

Well... queue is at #41 now (started at 311) and the torrent says it'll be ready in about 1d 23h

Argh

OB and CB clients *are* the same - you can log into the fileplanet beta if you exchange the localconfig.xml for another i recently found in an german forum. I haven't got the whole link anymore but the HP of these guys is

http://www.destruktive-brut.net/forumwar/index.php

according to their readme... haven't checked it yet, i'm just DLing GenBeta per torrent because fileplanet's waiting line shows "21min" for the last 3hrs or so

So, if it's not all hoax it should be the same client. Peace.

It might be part of a solution if MMO's implemented filters which are able to remove people from your game completely - which is something that should not be awfully hard to implement...

Based on this idea you could use RP-flags not only to show if somebody is a roleplayer or not - but to filter out all non-rp players out of your game completely. To  make this idea work you would need GM's to ensue that the RP-mode isn't overrun by griefers or ooc-players.

Peace

I  H-A-T-E the way these guys handle the PR on Warhammer online - constantly dishing out new releases instead of just shutting up about it and starting a solid PR-campaign about 6 months before the realistic release date. This is just a big pile of bullsh*t - if there was a problem with development, then it was OBVIOUS the last times the game was pushed back for 3 months...

What i mean is: imagine you're a dev and you don't see your game getting ready as scheduled - do you delay it for 3 months, then again for 3, and then again for half a year at least?

No you don't because either you see that your game will not be ready for a year, in that case its just PR - and making a lot of people angry and/or frustrated by the way. OR you think it'll be ready in 3 months and have t odelay another 3 months because you see you just need another bit of time... but it just doesn't make sense to sell it as if the devs were going "Whoops! Well, there was this little thing you know, and now we need a year *at least* instead of 3 months for fixing it".

The argument that they're "making the game better" and "will not launch a game that is ready and polished" is wearing off - i believed it once, even twice... but not three times. Not if the last delay means the difference between a summer release with a lot of people in holidays and a christmas release  ( "fall" normally means december when people want to sell anything) with a lot of people shopping presents for their beloved and themselves.

This really sucks - not because WAR is delayed, but because you end up feeling bullsh*tted.

Well Dan... count me in if it goes beta (yes, i do like that smiley)

Just a sidenote:

A little helper in terms of keeping the immersion would be a global chatfilter - just a little bugger that you can turn on and off, changing "LOL" into a predefined string like "Well that got me laughing!" or "Hehe" etc.

If you let the players define what they don't want to hear and give the opportunity to replace it (or to wipe it out completely), it should work quite good... The drawbacks would be that instead of "LOL PWNED"-spam you would get "Hoho i really got you now!"-spam... but still a major improvement to a large global chat i guess.

Players would have to invest some time to update/complete their list of unwanted phrases at first, but then again it should be pretty easy to download standard lists from the web. Again one of the features i'd like to see implemented in many MMO's not just a Horror-themed one... it should'nt be too hard to implement, i guess.

Just a thought: if you had the opportunity to ignore a player completely, then it could work out... i do not mean to block that player from the chat, but to make him invisible too... this combined with an quickignore-button should do it really.. if you encounter someone really breaking the immersion, then click his name in chat / target him in some way if you see him dancing around - and WHAM - he's off your screen for good... you could soften this harsh concept by introducing ignore timers such as 1/8/24 hrs or permanent ignore.

Wel... I like the thought

A very good article indeed.

I would LOVE to see this kind of MMO grow big but i guess there will always be a Player dressed in pink babbling some nonsense and thus ruining the game for all others in the area. It's the good old RP-question in fact... the pink player is having fun, it's just another kind of fun - and he has the same right to have fun as I (*who is punching IGNORE repeatedly at the sight of such immersion-killing behaviour) have.

So it's strict RP-enforcement  for the sake of immersion as it seems - or heavy instancing, but most people (including me) seem to hate it.  There may be other ways to solve it, such as a VERY large gameworld = you encounter less players, but they all have their own problems; in this case you do not only encounter less idiots - you encounter less players alltogether, and then.. why play an MMO ? Not to mention the work that would have to be put into such a large world. I guess a GW-type of game would be the best solution if done right, although... yes, i HATE massive instancing.

Well, that's my 2cents for today. Good article.

It's quite a good article and it decribes CoH well... except for one thing: questing is mostly inside buildings and HIGHLY repetitive. Yes, HIGHLY.

Many people who have tried out CoH went "oh, THIS IS FUN" for about 10-20 days, changing their opinion to "jesus, this is BORING" when confronted with this feature for a while.

It's still a good game though.

ps: Servers are pretty empty, too.

A good article. I would agree that gaming addiction is probably rather a symptome of an underlying deficit or mental disorder... time will tell what will become of this discussions, but it's already an object of research, so thats a bit of hope for the people suffering of it.