I agree and that's what I'm doing. I'll pass any and all judgements on SWTOR after I've played it for a while. In the end though I'am a fan, my car has the SWTOR sith logo on it and I wear shirts all the time with both Empire and Republic logos (my wife is sick of them). I agree however, I'm just sitting back at this point and enjoying the ride... in a way it feels unreal that their is a launch date.

A well writen article with some seriously good points of view. When you think about those three complaints they do sound very stupid.

You know I'm a huge TOR fan and I'm not an avid PvPer but I loved WARs battlegrounds. I think I'll be a PvPer in TOR, at least with the battlegrounds and Ilum!

Originally posted by muaddib101

Yeah, world vs. world sounds awesome! I mean, if you like the idea of herding cats, which is basically what large scale PvP like this winds up being. Anything over 100 people just winds up being mass chaos (and even 100 people is pushing it most of the time).

 

 You know cat hearding is one of my hobbies. In all seriousness though I truely enjoy large scale PvP outside of FPS games because of the chaos. Its just plane fun to watch 100+ people firing spells, guns, arrows, or what ever at eachother. Who said war was organized anyways!

I wouldn't say that Rift could be considered the first or only to date sucsessful MMO to launch in 2011. Any game that launches and dosn't fully fall on its face due to bugs or lack of content could also be considered a sucsessful MMO. I think Rift has been 2011s first profitable and large scale launch. It has kept a fair ammount of subscribers over the months unlike games like DCU.

I will say that Rift so far is in good times, however with SWTOR and GW2 on the horizon (one aiming for this year) I think Rifts future is going to be a bumpy one. You see Rift is of the EQ2/WoW generation in design. It's groundbreaking because it has dynamic world content and that is a key feature that will keep the game afloat. However when it comes to story and overall concept the game follows the WoW formula rather well.

As I mentioned before SWTOR and GW2 are going to collide in the near future. If they were both two storm systems then we're looking at the perfect storm of MMOs. Two massive titles fighting and feeding off eachother. All other smaller MMOs may very well perish. Shure some will limp out of the storm that is coming but many will never truely be the same again. SWG is the first victim and the games haven't even launched yet.

I think Rift will weather that coming storm even ride some waves with grace, but I think in the end its population will fall, its servers merged and it will become known as one of the most groundbreaking WoW-era MMOs ever made.

Ok that was funny. I agree I love the art books... but obviously not as much as him lol.

Originally posted by abbaba

One thinng mmorpg.com's writers lack is humor. Nice to read something I can laugh about, instead of the usual vein of  "SW:TOR doesn't excite me."  Well done Mr. Coyote.

 

 Agreed. The writer you speak of... the one with the "SW:TOR" article has been bugging me for weeks now. I used to like her writing... now she just seems like she is whining all the time.

SWTOR will do well I think... if they ever announce a release date... it's starting to bug me at this point.

As for the console industry... I'd spend more money on it if they had some decent MMOs.

I think you said it all right their, they did a blanket ban of accounts that had to much gold. In their collective minds they couldn't take any risks. I would say its unethical to blanket ban your case is an extreamly good point of that. Unfortunatly with all our technological advances and all the great gaming entertainment we have, we gamers have almost no rights as customers. I believe there was a blog on this page about how the EULAs and such are written in such a way that we lose all of our rights to complain. In essence when we play MMOs we are truely at the mercy of the devs. That is the problem with MMOs versus offline games. You own your PS3 or Xbox 360 games, but you don't own an MMO. You own the disks you may have gotten when you bought a boxed title but if blizzard shuts down WoW tomorrow their is nothing any of its millions of players can do. Sadly I had my PS3 account banned and Sony won't listen to my pleas to have it reinstated. It was hacked once and someone charged stuff on my credit card (over $250 on PSP games) and I guess a spamer also got into my account. I didn't do those things but because my account was abused or part of an abuse sony thought it was just easier to ban the account and force me to make a new one which is what I did.

It's unfortunate but I've found in the online gaming world it's best to keep your head down. Devs are the tyrants of the gaming world. Some are wonderful and kind and others are cruel and abusive. Sometimes they have to do harsh things to protect themselves, other players, and even you. For all we know gold farmers and such truely were starting to hack your account. Or perhaps their was evidence of other IP adresses logging into your account which made them want to ban your account. Unfortunately their is no way to know what happens to your account when you're logged off. My PSN account is an example of that.

I'm not truely trying to defend Aeria, I think they should review your case in detail, even look at all your evidence and look at the logs. If nothing is found they should reinstate your account and let you play again. It would be nice if they'd do that but as I mentioned they have all the power and we gamers have none. The truth is the fight for gaming rights has just begun (and in some cases hasn't even started). We as gamers diserve the right to protect our investments. I think if its an account you spent money on and they ban it you should get a full refund of all your purcheses. However that is a long time coming... if ever.

Honestly I can see both sides of the argument here. However as a player I would naturaly side with you. You were just playing the game very well, you knew what was selling, when to sell it, and how to sell it. You sir are a digital merchant.

However playing the other side (I love to put myself in other people's shoes) you were infact building up tons of in game cash. To most mmo devs this looks suspicious. Here you are gathering up lots of gold... for what purpose? Was there something you were trying to save up for? From what you stated on the blog you were just gathering gold for the sake of it. I don't think they banned you because you didn't pay for anything. In truth you did pay, with real world time. Other people paid for those objects you bought and you paid for them with your time... aka your in game gold. So in a way Ariea wouldn't have made any money if it wern't for you since those who bought item shop stuff bought it for the purposes of selling it on the AH and if you sir wern't their then they wouldn't have bought it because their were no true buyers.

I think plain and simple your account seemed suspicious to them. Some of the objects you were buying or being bought from you could have been bought by gold farmers or bots or what ever. There was no way for ariea games to gain proof that you yourself wern't a gold farmer. They just see an abnormaly large ammount of money on an account without any rhyme or reason and then see some minor connections to known gold farmers and they jump the gun, shoot first ask questions later.

Now as I mentioned before I believe you are innocent and that they are commiting a gaming atrosity against you. Your account should be reinstated and if they have a problem with you buying and selling at such a rate then they need to use their mighty developer skills and come up with a way to hinder you from being so dang uber great at what you do. However the game prides itself on allowing people to play truely for free if they're good enough. The problem is you're a good example of how the game may let you win for free but the company is so paranoid that it jumps at every gold hording account they see.

In short you've reinforced my feeling that P2P is the way to go if only for security purposes. I would never say that it's your fault but perhaps if you love a game so much that you'd commit so much time to, next time you could toss them like $15 bucks worth of item shop purches if only to say "hey dudes, thanks for letting me rock your game's world keep it up and keep the lights on in the office."

I think the truth is, judging from your responses in your ban mails you probably hurt someone's feelings with that "great customer service" comment. Here you are an uber player not paying for their game and then making puns against "Free" customer service. In the end you may have just pissed someone off and they're using your gold as a way to get back at you. It's a sucky situation. Perhaps you could get a lawyer to pick up a case for you.

Though I disagree with afking during a raid or dungeon run I will say this, this weeks Guild Sores was much better. Keep moving along this path it was a bit funnier than last week.

The game looks great, I hope they come out with an android or iOS version so I can take it on the go with me. I look forward to playing it.

Sadly... the humor eludes me. Nice try though... I think I know where you were going... kinda.

Originally posted by Raventree

I do believe the reports of the death of the PC have been greatly exaggerated.

Yes phones and tables will become very common, but try typing up a long report or getting any real work done on one of them and I believe you will quickly come to the conclusion the PC will be here a long long time.  Being scrunched up over a little tiny device typing for 4 hours isn't going to make anyone happy.

 

 I don't know if you know this but all Pad devices now have keyboards that you can buy for them. So typing isn't a problem.

Mr. Coyote,

You've placed you're entire argument on the fact that PCs will be saved by porn, however I have a confilicting belief. Yes phones are getting faster but no, no one is going to us their phone for gaming. The iPad and other Pad devices are however the future... and yes you can surf porn on them, so PCs are not exclusive in any way to that... past time that you so love. All Pad devices are essentialy mini-lap tops. So yes in the future I can see them taking over the industry when it comes to portable PCs. A few more generations and some tech genius is going to figure out how to put a nice graphics card into one of those things.

I can see PCs disapearing as we know them. The concept of a PC will never die though it will just evolve as it always has into something new. Pads are just the first version of that sift. Many people are sick and tired of buying computers only to find that their system is the optimal system to use the software they wanted. People just want to buy a product and have it work, period. 90% of PC users (rough estimate) don't know how to build or fix a PC, that's why companies like Geek Squad exist. Most PC users embrace simplified usage where as a minority builds and customizes their own system.

In the end the Pad devices are an example of the future. I'm not saying they are the future but they are the first ever (outside of apple and a few other small groups) standardized PCs. It is the begining of the melding, when PCs and Consoles become one. When you no longer have to ask if your ATI card is going to work as well as your friends Nvidia card, where game's will be labeled Android 4.5 compatable, and that'll be the only thing you need to know to run the game. Not a huge list of specs that tell you your processor is to weak.

In the end I embrace the change. I want a system that is standard like a PS3 with the complex software of windows or something like it. That way I never again put $1000+ dollars down on a computer only to find that it's already 6-8 months old and newer games are already required on the "medium" setting. You're right many of the devs out their are flocking to the consoles. CCP, the creaters of EVE are creating Dust (some number) to work along side EVE and what system is it on? PS3 only... I guess their is more money over there.

For your sake the change I mentioned will probably not happen over night. My estimate is that within a decade you'll start to see the first ever standardized PCs.

The fact that Heat Wave didn't launch G&HRR as a F2P game was a shock to me. I refuse to pay $49 for a game that everyone knows will go F2P asap. Nah I'll wait untill it goes F2P before I jump into that title.

Originally posted by Tailz2k7

Just another WoW clone, nothing to see here ... =)

 

 ROFL by saying that you only show your ignorance to what WoW is and what a WoW Clone is. Clone Wars is anything but a WoW clone because it realy dosn't have any of WoW's elements. In short is a collection of mini-games. Do your research next time first before commenting on things you don't unterstand ... =)

I preordered the CE edition. Honestly I was hard pressed to justify the $150 and it was my wife who insisted that I get it because I've been talking about SWTOR for the last few years. I liked all the annoucements at SDCC the problem I do have is this lack of release date. I like the beta weekend stuff sure, but for me I just wana play my perminant character, not some toon that'll be deleted after I log out.

Also I don't like the concept of pre-ordering a game that has no launch date. Its like a risk-investment, you don't know when it'll pay off for you. With that said I'll be 100% happy when they can truely say month, date, year to us and hold that date down.

I love UO and would totaly go back but these days I don't have the time to play it. With newer games coming out and such I think UO would need a big update, one that I cared about deeply to force me to go back... something with PvE factions, multi-races and a series of new towns. I kinda always liked the idea of mixing the races of EQ with the sandbox of UO. Make it so that some races can go almost everywhere and other's are stuck in thier homelands untill they prove themselves.

Originally posted by bobfish

One reason not to crave Guild Wars 2...

 

The rabid fanatical fans that keep harping on about how awesome it is going to be and frequently hijack discussions about other MMOs, bashing them and promoting GW2.

 

Of course I will get the game and no doubt enjoy it, but I could do without the fans it currently has hyping it up.

 

 I've noticed this. They're everywhere. I would be more interested in the game if they kept their mouths quiet rather than bashing games that I'm excited about.

In the end though GW2 looks good on its own without crazy fans pushing it. SWTOR is still my first choice for many, many reasons, one of which is I need a break from fantasy for a bit. I will likely buy GW2 on launch day or slightly after. The fact is I liked GW1 and if GW2 still has no sub then it'll be a mega buying point for me.