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Originally posted by Roin

If you are running out of quest on planets you are doing something wrong.  There is easily enough quest on each planet to put you a level or more pass their recommend level cap.

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I have a feeling some trolls are just grinding quests like they do in every other mmos for the 'speed run'.

I was just in a party with a guy today who everytime we got to a hub, he'd be out of ready to go in like.. 10 secs. When I asked him was he skipping all the cutscenes, he said "yes". When I asked him did he do these before (in early betas) he said "No".

Then I asked why he just hit spacebar all the time and waited around for me to watch them and he said "I'm just trying to get to max". When I asked how long he was on, he said he hadn't logged out for 11 hours straight.

This is what the mmo genre has come to. Players who've been trained that mmos are just something to 'level in', and then go to the next game.

So, a one legged man entered a Sack race vs five amputees and wins. I guess you can still call it a contest, but not that exciting...

657 in queue.

Only posting because I can't get in to play atm. :(

I would think more people are unguilded than guilded. Usually on launch days you have very few guilds running around.

Then when you figure in the kind of game ToR is (heavily story based), you'll probably have many people who want to concentrate on the story first before getting into guilds and having to talk on Vent.

I suspect that quite a few people won't even think about joining guilds until the Operations at endgame. They are simply having fun in game first.

Rift.

There are tons of currencies to grind for different gears.

There are dungeons all over from normal to Master mode. You can grind raids with 19 other people.

And if you're done all that, you can grind PA which is like skills ability bonuses and such.

It's currently the newest game out if you like to grind and they are running firesale deals on their prices all the time.

" I Have a Weird Feeling Someone's Paying Gamasutra to Bash Skyrim"

I had that same feeling too, then I took an arrow to the kneecap.

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Originally posted by Sorrow
By going open beta on or around the SWTOR launch, <blah blah>

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Originally posted by Bandar83

Quoted from their website:  

• Open beta will not be initiated before Christmas, but will be a part of our strategy next year prior to our April 2012 launch.    

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I think I'd have to try it first before saying I'd pay for it.

Right now all anyone can see are the videos pretty much of other people playing it.

OP, there are a crapton of servers.

If you can't get Davros on one, just keep moving around until you get one. I doubt there will be that many people stealing it.

Even so, Daavros (which looks more StarWarsy than Davros to me), Davrros, Dahvros, etc.

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Originally posted by aesperus
Wow, out of all the definitions for the word 'gimmick' you guys managed to avoid the one most relevant to the topic.

gimmick: to equip or embellish with unnecessary features, especially in order to increase salability, acceptance, etc.

(can be a verb, adjective, or adverb)

 

Furthermore, by this definition, TOR's voice overs can be viewed as a gimmick. They do not affect the core game play, but instead distract from it. RIFT Souls do the exact opposite, in that they force players to concentrate on how they are playing the game, and use the mechanic to support their own playstyles. However, Rift's rift system could be viewed as a gimmick, because they just aren't all that central to the game. They are more of a side-event.

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Of COURSE Voice acting is the gimmick. It's the 'hook' that people want who are playing it. How is that not clear?

I'm saying it's a necessary hook, not a cheap ploy as Bioware uses this all the time. Anyone who's ever played a Bioware game and then played TOR WITHOUT voice acting would be like "Okay, not bad but this would have been better with VO like in KOTOR. Why didn't they do that?"

Instead, you read people saying "I love how it has that KOTOR feel because of the VO".

Now those who like Rift may not like it because Rift has some pretty poor VO so they probably think TOR will be that way as well. The VO in Rift isn't really the important part of the story and having some guys from the stock room instead of pros do it doesn't help.

All games have a gimmick. Some use them cheaply (souls when extra souls are not necessary due to 51 point builds perfectly fine) and some use them as one of the most important parts of the game; to set atmosphere/immersion/lore.

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Originally posted by eyelolled
It seems like they are using a charity to drive up business, but it's no worse then Blizzard auctioning off their garbage for charity

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The difference was that instead of $1 for each player upgrading, Blizzard donated all the proceeds of the sale to the kids. They didn't keep any for themselves.

Charity Auction to Benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospita

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Following a recent upgrade of our World of Warcraft server hardware to improve your gameplay experience, we have decided to auction off the retired HP p-Class server blades and donate the proceeds to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital®.

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I think what gets people and what they don't like when companies do this in general is, if they ARE going to do it at least show some dignity and donate all the money you got, not 1/10th of what you made.

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Originally posted by Eudaimon

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Originally posted by Orphes

There is three choices.
 
1. You donate directly, $10 (any amount really) to childsplay.
2. You bougth this upgrade and indirectly donate $1 to childsplay.
3. Or donate nothing.
 
Option three is better than the second option, right?
 

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It could well be...though it depends what you mean by "better".  It's certainly financially better for the charity for people to do 2 rather than 3.
Is it morally better?
For a consequentialist view of morality one would probably think so as it would, one hopes, be improving the lot of the less fortunate.
However, not everyone agrees that the consequences of actions are all that matters, morally speaking;  many would hold the reasons for which something is done as being of prime importance in moral considerations.
I have to say that I don't like this kind of marketing ploy; particularly distasteful to me is how it instrumentalises charity

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Another way it could have been done was that Trion could say "For anyone that donates $10 to charity, we will offer them the digital upgrade for $5".

That way, the charity gets ALL of the money and Trion only loses $5 but they get to write that part off.

Anyone really wanting to donate to sick kids would realize that for $15, they got an upgrade/mount AND Trion got money but the kids were the real winners because they got a straight $10 bucks instead of $1.

Or even "A $5 donation to Child's Play gets you a $5 price on some digital pixels".

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Originally posted by sanosukex

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Originally posted by popinjay

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No. That's not why people bought the game. They bought the game because of R I F T S.
If they bought it because they could "shift on the fly", why did they leave if they can still "shift on the fly", lol? That part of the game hasn't changed since beta.
But rifts have. They became less and less important and that's why people left. You seem to think people play games for some character gimmick or mechanic when I think people play games for fun.
 
 

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rifts soul system and its rifts/invasions is no more of a "gimmick" than TOR's voice overs. IMO it's not a gimmick in either game its a core part of the game itself. But if you are going to label it a gimmick you would have to label TOR's voice overs the same since essentially it doesn't add to the core gameplay mechanics of the game if that's how you view rifts soul system.

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a : an important feature that is not immediately apparent : catch
b : an ingenious and usually new scheme or angle
c : a trick or device used to attract business or attention <a marketing gimmick>

They both are. The problem is, "shifting on the fly" isn't important as it's just more convenient. Any dungeon in Rift can be done without anyone NEEDING to switch souls so it's not really that important. You could complete any dungeon or raid in Rift with base classes and nothing fancy; the only thing is you can switch another soul and it's slightly easier, that's all. But 51 point classes can do it all, so just put those on and go do the dungeon.

But story is the important gimmick in TOR. No story, no game. Or just like every other game out there.. average gameplay with poor story which surpisingly is Rift.

The story is the gimmick that keeps adventurers playing. They don't play because they can swap souls in games or else everyone would be flocking to Rift instead of ToR right now.

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Originally posted by Areanna
They are not sending out the actual early access emails until starting tomorrow, not sure what the OP received.

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Originally posted by nomss
So I glimpsed over the e-mail..

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It's what happens when people "glimpse".

Recent threads by Maryhiff:

"TOR Guild Server Notification email late"

"Server Name Release during EGA is a cluster F$$$ !"

You're on a roll, aren't you, hehe?

Anyways,

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Originally posted by SlickShoes

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Originally posted by popinjay
"six weeks from release STOR will be £15"
 
 
 
How much is this in real money?

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$23.40

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Originally posted by RogueTroopa
Well actually myself and 3 friends who all beta-tested the game and decided just how plain average it is.
 

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Go in peace.

"six weeks from release STOR will be £15"

How much is this in real money?

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Originally posted by I_Return

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Originally posted by popinjay
 

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Originally posted by Zylaxx

A little game called Skyrim just came out and took the world by storm.  WoW still is the Behemoth of the MMO universe.  SWOR is coming out with record numbers and isntead of catering to the Sci-Fi crowd it comes out rocking the whole "fantasy" vibe.  Theres what like 50 million fantasy MMO's and soemthing like 3 Sci-Fi MMO's on the market. 
 
I dunno I could point to every indicator that tells me that fantasy is alive and just fine but your incessent whining about anything fantasy is down right brutal and idiotic.  We get it you despise fantasy, but just because you dont like something doesnt mean is dieing.  See I could say the same thing about anything even Sci-Fi but  Idont because its pointless and isst even true.  So for fracks sake can it with the whole "fantasy is dieing" bullcrap already because it makes you look stupid.

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So a high fantasy single player came out and "took the world by storm"? No. Everyone who games already knows what Elder Scrolls are. Besides, if that's your criteria then that means the MMO industry will see a ton of Battlefield 3/ MW3 mmos coming out because collectively more people bought them than Skyrim.
 
 
 
High fantasy has it's fans. I like it as well. But the populations as a whole want to see other types of games. Dwarves are not "cool" anymore. Elves.. people want to kill them.
 
 

The mmo industry is moving away from that area overall and bringing more types of games into it and that's a good thing.
 

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Speak for yourself, I'm still waiting on a very  open high fantasy mmo.

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EQ1.

EQ2.

LOTRO.

WOW.

Runes of Magic.

FFXI.

FFXIV.

Rift.

I'm sorry, you said you're still waiting?

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Originally posted by Boudewijns
Im wondering how long it will take when we see the first spam in global chat for buying creds.

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