Originally posted by depain

This is why I'm bummed about SWTOR:

I was born during the release of the original Star Wars: A New Hope. Thus, I was raised within this precedented sci-fi realm. It's something that you just don't grow out of.

HOWEVER, this doesn't mean that I haven't mentally evolved with the genre. I'm older. Pure simplicity doesn't sustain my interest. I yearn for a certain degree of depth and complexity. SWTOR doesn't seem to offer that. It seems to be more geared toward the new blood of Star Wars - those who grew up with Episode 1, 2, and 3 (the young).

I'm not asking for SWG 2.0. I do, however, wish that the game contained some on-the-side forms of social-sandbox elements, e.g., planets spefically made for housing, cities, player shops, incentive to hangout in the cantinas, etc.

The game, in my opinion, would be a sure win had it contained the perfect blend of Sand Box and Theme Park elements.

 

This was me during the Empire Strikes Back Days (look at the couch!):

Holy crap!!! Underoos. I loved my underoos. My favorite ones were the Superman and Spiderman ones. I remember wearing the Superman ones and tying a sheet or towel around my neck and flying around the house. 

Back in the day when I kicked the crap out of my dad and my uncle on our Pong machine. Combat on Atari was probably the most played game in our house but asteroids was a close second because me and uncle were always trying to beat each other's scores. Freakin' good times.

Now that I've sufficiently dated myself:

I'm pretty excited about The Old Republic. The voice acting seems solid and engrossing unlike DCUO's horrific, lackluster voice acting. It's a stretch to call DCUO's voice overs acting. It's like they stuck their heads out of the office and flagged down the cleaning staff and asked them if they wanted to make an extra 5 bucks. Even Gina Torres' stuff is unemotional and bland. Mark Hammill had an awesome delivery for the vault in beta but they raped it and either used a different take or cut out the pauses which effectively neutered the delivery. 

Anyway...

The Old Republic looks set up to have a nice engaging story and that will keep me occupied for much longer than grinding through the tired, redundant, standard MMORPG fare that is kill y and retrieve x number of entrails or repeating the same handful of dungeons over and over and over.

You've got the over-arching story and each class has it's individual class story. The companions will add more diversity to repeat playthroughs as will playing through making Lightside or Darkside decisions. There is a lot of potential for replay of different and same classes. Plus, if they extend the story arcs through additional content, which I fully expect, it adds that much more to the game.

The only thing the game seems to lack is non-combat social aspects. Pazzak or other such games added to Cantinas would be great. 

I understand that a lot of MMORPG enthusiasts are not too fond of change, eventhough they clamor for it and complain, but the genre needs something more than just quest hub NPCs, fetch quests, and dungeon running. The Old Republic isn't reshaping the genre but they definitely seem to be enhancing the enjoyment of the game by putting time, effort, and polish into the story and I think that will make all the difference. 

That being said, it would have been nice to see old school SWG's influence in the gameplay. It was unique and engaging and I don't think we will ever see anything like it again. Creating non-combat classes that interact with the combat classes set the stage for players to experience and live in a sort of virtual Star Wars world. With the homogenization approach to the genre that's become so popular recently, every player can do everything... and that's the problem.

I think they should just combine MMORPG.com, FPSGuru.com, and the other sites into one big gaming site and be done with it. 

They'd have one big site for gaming and lots and lots of hits. 

So I've had 45 days of free time for DCUO and have logged in like 3 times for a grand total of about 4 hours. I just can't bring myself to play the game.

I posted a laundry list of things that bother me about the game. My top most complainst are:

Charging for added content through an in-game shop on top of a monthly subscription.

Charging for DLC (Lantern "expansion") on top of a monthly subscription.

Those are valid concerns that should rile up the neck hairs on any self respecting consumer/gamer, right? Am I the only person that is offended at what amounts to triple dipping into their customers' wallets?

The double dipping with the cash shop on top of a monthly sub is bad enough but then they turn around and want to charge for what is pretty much the only significant addition to the game since it's release. And the handful of people that still play the game are defending that kind of behavior.

Someone please let me know that I'm not Charleton Heston srounded by apes or at least enlighten me as to why I shouldn't be offended by this kind of stuff.

Noone else find this kind of thing insulting? I think that it's practices like this that have been choking the life out of this genre. All video games are getting streamlined and dumbed down and it sucks. Video games used to be the realm of the smart guy. MMOs were the pinnacle of that. They had big learning curves and lots of ins and outs, but that's what made them worth putting time into. This stuff now is the mental equivalent to making paper air-planes over and over but never actually taking them outside and throwing them, and the business models get shadier every year.

DCUO isn't a bad game. It has potential. I went back for my 45 free days and it looks like they've finally added all of the UI functionality that should have been in at launch. There's just not many people playing the game at all.

I logged on the test server and saw like 5 people. I actually saw the most people on Virtue and Vice, a PvE server. 

I knew that the PvP servers would be ghost towns a month or so after release... and they are. What happened? Why is it like this?

You could blame the rushed released, but that's not it. You could even blame the slow pace that content trickles out, but that's not it either. So what killed DCUO? The players killed DCUO.

It never ceases to amaze how players will flock to any glitch/exploit they can find and use it ad nauseum until it gets addressed. You had to see this coming. DCUOs community, for the most part, was absolutely horrible on the PC. I don't know how it was or is on the PS3 servers, but on the PC servers, the community ran the game into the ground and then cried foul and started blaming the developers.

Now they're trying to pick of the pieces and recoup their losses. They spent years of their lives working on this game to have a bunch of Timmies run in and ruin as many other people's fun as they could possibly manage and in turn chase most everyone away.

Should they be charging for the new content? No.

If they wanted to seriously recoup their losses they would purge every single glitch/exploit/"cancel" from the game and then turn around and release the content for free, while simultaneously offering a free week as a trial for all players.

The megaserver set up is pretty cool. You use a concole in your faction's base to switch from PvE to PvP. If they can find away to bring people back once those go live then I think the game has a shot at making a come back, but they definitely aren't going to bring people back like this.

Originally posted by apocalance

So now that the battlefield games have a type of leveling and character persistence, I wonder what a game like planetside has to offer for a monthly fee, where the bf type of games don't have a monthly fee. 

 

BF, CoD, and the other FPS franchises (is that the plural form of franchise?) don't have a persistent map to fight over to gain territory for your chosen faction. However, Chromehounds had this and the online play was a war which declared a winner under the right conditions and then reset the map.

It required no monthly fee and it was loads of fun. Planetside 2 needs to offer some solid gameplay with tons of bells and whistles if SOE wants it to have any kind of success.

A rehash of the original Planetside with slightly better graphics just won't cut it. They also need to smooth out the controls and aiming. Planetside was a fun game, but it was one of the clunkiest clumsy FPS ever.

Originally posted by Silverwatch

Hi I am thinking of buying this game as I love DC and Superhero MMO's. I was wondering how the keyboard/mouse compare to the controller? Can you use a xbox 360 controller with the game? Also how does the keyboard/mouse combo work, does it feel like you 'should' be using a controller? Thanks in advance.

I don't recommend using a mouse and keyboard if you are even semi-familiar with a controller. I use an Xbox 360 controller and I thoroughly enjoy it.

There are a few things to keep in mind when starting fresh:

Just because someone is level 30 doesn't mean that you can't spank them into the ground at level 13. I've done so a few times while leveling my second character. It's one of those preconceived notions from every other MMO that if you are a higher level you will crush lower levels. While higher levels do increase your stats, HP, and Power pool a bit, skill is definitely more important than level.

The thing that makes the most difference, specially when it comes to facing people who have rushed to the level cap, is that you get 1 skill point for every 100 Feat points.

Feats are Achievements and you get them for all kinds of things, but your bread and butter for Feats are going to be from soloing the instances at the end of every quest line without dying and without using Sodas. You can also get Feats from exploring, doing races, and completing all of the side quests for each quest line.

You don't have to use an alternate weapon, but you can put points into alternate weapons to get the passive benefits. You don't need to be using the weapon to receive the passive bonuses.

Once you start getting role specifc gear, i.e. Tank gear, Controller gear, Healer gear, you do not have to be in the role to use the items. It just means that if Tank gear drops and you're a tank you can use it even if you are in damage role.

Every role has a counter. Every move has a counter.

If some one is rolling around like a fool thinking they are invincible you can counter them by Lunging (Every weapon choice has a Lunge move), using AoEs, and/or using a rush down ability from your Travel power pool. 

Lunging someone who is dodge rolling hard stuns them.

Block breaking someone who is Blocking hard stuns them.

Blocking someone who is Lunging hard stuns them.

Last but not least, always do your lowest level quests first. They give great exp even when you severely out level them and they also keep you at a higher level than the bosses at the end of each quest line so that you can farm some Feats for skill points early on. This only works up to a point and then you really need to bring your A game to get the higher level feats for going through an instance without dying or using Sodas.

Hope that helps and good luck to you.

I love tanking. It's fun and engaging. It requires much more attention than just finding the optimal rotation and gear and then going on autopilot. 

That being said, no aspect of WoW is hard. 

The game is far too reliant on gear to ever be too involved skill wise.

Are these keys to the level 30 cap servers or the level 20 cap servers?

Originally posted by severius

Hopefully SOE paid you very well for that commercial.

 

Yeah because if someone publishes good things about upcoming games they must be a shill for the publishing company.

I think your tin foil hat is a little loose. Might want to tighten it up and push it back on the top of your head.

Please don't kill my favorite game series by adding the trappings of "MMORPGs" to what to me, is hands down the best FPS mechanics ever.

I loved Tribes 2 and I like Tribes Vengeance before all the aimbotting and speedhacks and Vivendi not even delivering a full product after charging full price for the going retail rate of games.

The Tribes series of games is my all time favorite, but I won't be playing if they add in some BS stats and grinding to be able to have the load outs that you want.

Originally posted by ANDRIOD

I really did not like CO.

 

I didn't either and I still get comics in the mail on a regular basis. I absolutely hate Cryptic's cut and paste engine. I really hope that they aren't trying to use the same engine for Neverwinter Nights. I hate that they got their grubby little hands on that IP.

City of Heroes was cool, but I think it was a fluke for these guys. 

Originally posted by Jermatoo

They really can't Eff this game up anymore than they have before, hopefully they can save this mmo before it dies. Nuff said.

 

Here's the thing though. It's a lame duck.

Grand Theft Auto 4's multiplayer has more gameplay features than this game does. It has more vehicles and more gametypes, AND you don't have to fork out a monthly fee to play it. (Other than the 50 bucks a year that Xbox Live costs.)

The only thing this game offers that GTA4 and Read Dead Redemption don't is the extraneous crap like character and vehicle customization (which is admittedly top notch), the Fruity Loops Pro-esque music creator, and the other creation stations.

I know that most of the people that frequent this board don't keep up with console gaming and it's definitely your loss.

The lines between MMOs and games that don't require a monthly fee have become very convoluted; so much so, in fact, that analysts are predicting that Activision will start trying to charge a monthly fee to play First Person Shooters online.

My point is that most games that are out now just don't justify a monthly fee to play.  The more people realize that, the more they shift away from MMORPGs. The genre needs to adapt and change or risk going the way of the Dodo.

This game is perfect example.

Originally posted by lethys

After thinking for a long time, I don't believe this will be WoW in space.  The reason is that I'd bet a lot of money saying that there is not going to be any 40 man or 25 man raids.  No big PvP battlegrounds.  I honestly think this will be the biggest disappointment in, literally, the history of gaming.

 

I honestly feel bad for Bioware because they really should be doing what they do best; Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age 2, and some new games as well.  I just can't find myself caring about this world that Bioware is placing me in because I know I will have no effect on anybody, even if I "save the galaxy" or fight all the bad guys.

 

I honestly don't understand what you want the game to be. They have some really solid concepts, art, and animation. 

Player Housing will be in at launch, something WoW never had.

25 and 40 man raids suck. They are repetitious and even when new encounters are added it's the exact same mechanics with newly skinned dungeons and NPCs.

Maybe you're just jumping on the "it's cool to bag on upcoming games with any modicum of hype" bandwagon, or maybe you have some well thought out reasons as to why you have such a strongly negative opinion about the game.

I, on the other hand, do not even begin to share your sentiment.

          -The lore behind the game is solid and very engrossing. 

          -What I've seen of the voice acting is both solid and well written.

          -The gameplay looks fun.

There's not much to dislike about the game.

You're never going to find a game where you will become a special and unique snowflake who can single handedly shape and change the game world for everyone else.

Even in table top games, which are infinitely more fluid and adaptable than MMORPGs, you won't single handedly change the game world... unless the DM caters the whole campaign to you, which would probably mean that you would be the only player in the campaign.

What would be the fun in that?

Originally posted by tkreep

Originally posted by scottns

Originally posted by tkreep

it doesnt matter cuz the games graphics still looks like shit on PC n the gameplay is still some auto attack shit. I think im gonna be playing final fantasy 14 on my PS3

So you've played the game then?

please dont use that dumb excuse "so u played the game?" BS.  If I cant play it with a gamepad, then i dont want that shit.

Yeah, cause everyone knows you can learn everything you need to know about a game by looking at screenshots and pretending to know everything about it.

Seriously, how closed-minded can you be?

I was a little put off by the graphics initially. I was disappointed that they seemed to be trying to pander to the younger audience that followed The Clone Wars. It was disappointing because the original KotoR games were definitely not even half as child friendly as The Clone Wars. The style is definitely cartoony, but the graphics are most certainly not bad. I've enjoyed the scenery and animations from the videos posted on the website. WoW's graphics may be stylized, but that doesn't make them bad. ToR's graphics are stylized as well and have grown on me since the first announcement of the game.

If you look at the videos, interviews, screenshots, and read the background info via the website, you can really see that they are going with some very cool story elements which aren't anything like the Saturday morning cartoon narratives of The Clone Wars.

You don't like the game? Fine, but don't try to convince others that you know how the game is going to be when you know so little about it. Having a forum avatar from the official forums on a different site does not mean you know what the game is about. In fact, seeing how little you know about the game in conjunction with the fact that you have that avatar speaks volumes. 

You can't be bothered to browse through the site and read the articles, but you can damn sure link their artwork as your avatar.

I would also like to add, for you over zealous, forum Nazi mods on this site, that I am simply stating my opinion. This is not a personal attack, flame, or trolling. I'm sure you'll find some reason to temp ban me or remove my post. I'm starting to hate this site.

 I started over from scratch because I couldn't find my PlayOnline ID. Its fun and all, but because of the low pop I haven't been able to sell crystals to be able to get gil, to buy spells and equipment, to level up, so I can buy more spells and gear, to... yeah.. now I remember why I quit playing this game.

My email doesn't fit. I don't even remember what it was. Is your PlayOnline ID assigned to you or is it something you pick. Gonna check my old manuals and whatnot.

I just bought the Steam deal and I'm thinking I may have to start from scratch again... which sucks. I hope the grind isn't as bad as it was.

I heard that you can solo now. How?

 This game requires way too much time to play. I liked it for awhile, but it's pretty damn boring. You wait around forever and a day to get a party together, then when you finally do, you wait around some more for someone to pull one enemy to fight, which gives crap exp.

And then... you do that over and over and over and over and over.

I'm bored just thinking about it.

 Test

Originally posted by Wepdesign

Originally posted by Kryogenic

 The game looks amazing. I can't wait for it. I only wish that I could get my hands on it sooner.

 

Try like Spring 2011! Wouldnt surprise me it would be delayed even more. This game is sure very hyped and we've seen hyped games before:P

I don't care about the hype. I've seen the gameplay, the animation, the voice acting. The game looks good. If you've seen the footage of the game and aren't interested you're a moron , you have no taste for good games, and you don't know what you're talking about.

I'm not directing that at you Wepdesign, but you can't chalk up the excitement for this game on the hype alone. It's easy to see through hype: see Star Trek Online.

Even if The Old Republic turns out to be single player oriented I'll be playing it. Bioware hasn't released a game that I haven't liked. I've purchased everything they've put out for more than a decade.

In that time they haven't released a game that I didn't like. Jade Empire was my least favorite game, but it was still a well done game that is fun to play.

When a football team shows heart and professionalism all season you don't chalk up their success to hype.

Bioware has earned their reputation by releasing quality games with lots of content and polish.

 The game looks amazing. I can't wait for it. I only wish that I could get my hands on it sooner.