Dragons are looking like a slight minority at the moment. Very cool! I like a challenge ;P

Maybe I'm too pragmatic, but just go multi-faction and recruit responsibly? If you have voice chat, people can just ask others to stop ganking them if that's a problem, and those who can't listen to others may just need to be removed. I've seen it work a few times, and if you're an old guild, it means you have a lot of advantages (and history) to support a move like that.

I'm not seeing reasoning on how this'll change MMOs. It's more like "What it has that sorta makes it what we'd call an MMO." The last parts, to me, help confirm the idea that TOR's a single player RPG with a great lobby ;P

It's not an MMO, but the Animal Crossing series has some fun housing, and the online option for the last 2 really adds to the fun. It's been a nice way for me to pass the time while waiting for, at the very least, TOR (which I think may last me a month or so).

I really ought to stop reading these articles =/

Leading in and of itself is the reward, as it should be. Being a successful leader doesn't just = success, but gives you clout, forms a reputation, and generally allows you to do things others can't. For example, if a random guildie says they're going to play a different game, only their friends will really notice. However, if a leader (not always an officer, but someone with de facto control in forming groups, cohesive pvp plans, etc) says they're trying something else out, others are much more apt to follow. 

The social aspect should be the only reward for leading. Sorry, but the CEO statement was a bad one. It's like putting a business man in charge of government: he can handle the cash aspect, but the government's ultimate job is providing for people. As soon as this goes to priority 2, you need to get a new leader.

Originally posted by Axehilt

Difficulty = how much skill is required to avoid failure.

Penalty = what happens if you fail.

Therefore death penalty doesn't make games harder.  It just makes them more painful or inconvenient.

I think addressing this helps solidify the argument a bit more. The two go hand in hand. That is, if a game is challenging, you will "die" (or whatever the game mechanic may be) fairly often. If the penalty is high as well, it makes sure that players are avoiding death even more. Being reckless and lucky can get you through some "difficult" games if the penalty is light, while an easy game with a harsh death penalty suddenly seems more difficult merely because you have to focus a little more. For console gaming, IMO, it's important to balance the two, since the idea is that most people will want to see your entire game, but it needs to last a bit.

MMOs are a different beast though. Harsh death penalties are needed for some content. Look at WoW's pvp. It's largely considered a joke because no matter how many times you kill someone, they can come back and get round 2, sometimes before you even have a chance to heal up, which can lead to pvp degrading into a simple zerg fest. On the other hand, too harsh of a penalty may drive players away from a game (I can't get your average gamer to even give EVE or Darkfall a try because the idea of losing items is devastating to them). 

Let's try some concrete examples.

The Pokemon Colosseum series was frustrating as hell (and apparently cheated in some cases by making low accuracy moves more accurate for the NPC trainers). I would literally have to leave the room and take a walk at times because I'd get so angry. Losing meant having to start all over again, which cost time, but I didn't, say, lose poke-levels or anything. The game had a high difficulty, but low punishment.

Switch to FF11. The game wasn't hard IMO, but the penalty was high. I had trouble finding people to group with me, so I soloed in the wilds. Every once in awhile, someone would train mobs on me and I'd die and lose a chunk of xp. I actually spent a weekend bouncing between level 11 and 13, until finally swearing off the game. I wanted to see more of FF11, but the high death penalty and inability to progress brought additional challenges to the simplicity of the core game.

As others have noted, a lack of open beta generally means the developers are hiding something. On the function front, open betas can help prep for launch by providing a larger stress test. However, IMO, open betas are much more important for MMOs than with other products. For example, you cannot return an MMO to the store once you've purchased it. No other game has this limitation. Yes, you can ebay it, but that's a bit of a gray area (I've met enough people that bought brand new ebay accounts for next to nothing and had the original owner recall the account months/years later to know that it can simply be a way of getting free levels/items).

Personally, if I wasn't looking at this game as KotOR 3, this would be my red flag. However, since I'm mainly expecting a few months out of it, it's not going to stop me from buying the game.

A few folks have touched on this, so I'll reinforce some and possibly introduce others.

First, gear dependency and passivity. Tanking's most active job is holding aggro, not dodging and blocking. Stats tend to do the latter. While there may be a move that helps with mitigation, it's usually a short term buff, so it's more about stats and timing than the ability to simply, you know, not get hit. DPS and healing tends to be more active since your job a bit more skill dependent. Yes, tanks require you to know how to place a mob, drag it, keep aggro, etc (all additional reasons people may not play a tank), but your main job is to take damage for others, and the main way this is accomplished is through gear.

Next is that, like healers, tanks aren't great for soloing most of the time. You rarely kill things quickly. People like to see big numbers, and as a tank, that's usually going to be your HP. I frequently play tanks, but I get little joy out of having a shit ton of health. I get complements on it, but meh. I prefer hearing "Why won't you die!?" than "Nice HP!" Simply put, tanks rarely have the "wow" factor most people are looking for.

Overall skill check. The tank needs to know the encounter pretty well. They need to know how to move, when to move, where to move, all while keeping everyone else from taking damage. You're mommy/daddy. Usually you can give DPS bare-minimum info and they can do a good job, i.e. "Stand here, interrupt this spell, go all out at 50%." For tanks, maybe you get a "tank and spank" situation, which is pretty dull. DPS and heals might like it, but most of the time, for a tank, we can roll our face across the keyboard and get through the encounter. However, a lot of the time, we need to know that the DPS will be interrupting move X, and that if we don't see the cast bar disappear at about 75%, it's now our turn to deal with it. We have to move the boss to X location, usually while DPS is working against us for aggro and healers may be overhealing and potentially also gaining aggro, making positioning harder. We have to use cooldowns at a good pace for both the encounter and, at times, for the healer, so that they don't run out of mana. The overall pace and success is usually on our shoulders. Few people want that kind of responsibility, especially when it's so public and critical. Fewer still want to deal with the fact that you're learning the ropes, often times with veterans who are going to be super critical of all your mistakes throughout the learning process.

And this is where the next issue kicks in: the tanking glass ceiling. Most games have normal groups consisting of 5 players, 1 of which is a tank. Raiding, however, may involve 10-50 players, and meaning 2-10 groups of players. You would think that raids then need 2-10 tanks, but more often than not, raids need 2-3 tanks, even in 40 man encounters. What this means is that, after several levels or hours learning the ropes, becoming the front line leader needed to gear up and get ready for end game content, most of us will be cut simply because there's no room for us. Sure, maybe we can be the main tank for an alt run, but it means that, while someone can be main healer throughout their gaming life time, the tank will often have an alt to play because once they reach end game, there's a very real chance that they may be out of a job, unless they rank highly in the guild (and most established guilds have long term tanks who come in, clear content, then retire, which is maybe the first step towards the slump which is, saddly, when the benched tanks get called in).

And finally, there's pvp. I love being a pvp tank. Even if there's no npcs. I know how to spec, so that I have above average survivability, but I'm annoying enough with my actions and deal enough damage so that I can't be ignored. I know who to aim for to make the whole party target me, and my team mates can see that I live long enough and cause enough of a disturbance to get back up. It's awesome. The problem is, more so than most classes, tanking skills don't translate well into pvp. High threat moves usually aren't very useful without the high threat component, and taunts are only recently being made somewhat effective in pvp. Without some creativity, most tanks are, at best, flag carriers in objective pvp, and at worst, ineffective dps. Off the top of my head, in both WoW and Rift, people only talk about healing and dps pvp gear. It's an issue that, say, CC classes also suffer, and since we're such a gear reliant class, it's important. 

So, what are we left with? A class that's primary job is passive, needs to know the ins and outs of most of encounters to essentially baby sit the group, has to learn its job as the center spotlight of a group, and in the end, we may not have much of a use in raiding and pvp unless we're exceptionally skilled and have some good connections.

How can it be fixed? Think about heavy armor classes in an FPS game: your job is to physically step in front of the people you're protecting when need be, but people in general should be doing what they can to avoid getting hit. Make the tank capable of heavy hitting, dangerous enough that it can't be ignored, but the damage portion of the game is something everyone's susceptible to.

It's not an MMO, but I think Monster Hunter Tri did this best for pve tanking. Everyone was essentially a tank part of the time, since aggro was, in some ways, random (though some armor sets made you more likely to be attacted than others). When you had aggro, you needed to know how to move to minimize damage to both yourself and your group. It made everyone responsible for learning the game and avoiding damage, but good players could get in the way of some projectiles for other players, push others out of the way, etc. The Old Republic sounds like it'll be handling the pvp tanking part despite (what sounds like) another case of passive damage avoidance, but it's better than nothing. I've looked into TERA a bit, and it sounds like a nice enough system that may address both pve and pvp, but I keep comparing it to Monster Hunter and find that I'm deeply troubled by the hard set classes. That is, if you have too many of one class, you can't simply change your play style and be useful. We'll see how it goes.

"Questing" in the way most MMOs use it these days has become a dirty word to me. It's code for "grind." Granted, I actually enjoyed some of WoW's Cata quests (this was the first expansion where I finished all the new zones' quests instead of hit the cap and just aimed for some easy ones when I needed cash).

However, most of the time, I'd prefer to pvp or explore for xp. The "stumble upon a quest" method speaks to me as a former Asheron's Call player. Coming across something odd in the world like an NPC calling for help is kinda cool, which is something I've seen more in Rift (I'm talking about, say, the merchant outside of Meridian, who has no quest tag, and you can either help him fight some bandits for a small reward or kill him for a title). MMOs need more of this, and it sounds like AA will have this.

Mm, I haven't tried it myself, but for building, I've heard Xsyon isn't bad. There's still some kinks to work out, especially for combat/pvp, but it may be what you're looking for: http://www.xsyon.com/

ArcheAge- No one game in recent years has gotten me quite as excited, even when looking at the game with a fairly harsh "worst case scenario" POV (i.e. everyone plays it like WoW, middle conenant having no one outside my personal circle there, meaning at least my friends and I can slowly build the area in a meaningful way and kill each other).

Star Wars: The Old Republic- Mainly looking at this as a single player RPG with MMO features. If you're looking to get your feet wet again, this one's looking pretty softcore. It seems to offer to good solo experience and have some grouping, but unless there's something massive hidden up Bioware's sleeve, I can't see myself playing it too long.

Tera- I like what I've seen of the combat system. Sorta reminds me of Monster Hunter Tri, a console game that could allow up to 4 people to play together to kill monsters for their parts in order to make armor/weapons/housing items. It claims to have some sort of sandbox features, but I haven't heard any specifics yet. Combined with fixed classes that can't be switched (Unlike in Monster Hunter, where changing your weapon or bringing certain items allows you to change your playerstyle and group dynamics), it's probably best for folks tired of the "2-2-3-4-5-2-2-1-2-2-3..." type of combat MMOs are sort of known for.

Guild Wars 2- Think WAR mixed with GW1. The world's less instanced, but you can still transfer servers (called worlds now), but the rate's unknown. NPC and player towns can actually rise and fall based on your actions. Similar to AA, the game is trying to do away with the tank requirment for groups, but while AA retains the class as an option as just one of many potential strategies used in pve situations, GW2 will have no damage absorption class at all, instead relying on crowd control being given to all classes. While some can form CC via walls can be used for some creativity, I personally worry about your average WoW heads who, after 5+ years, still focus on damage meters rather than group progress.

Some of us saw Rift as having some softcore sandbox options (conquering zones by disabling towns, wars over rifts, etc). While these are being added in, the simple fact of the matter is that it's still very much a theme park game. I've been leveling up without questing much (aside from getting the bounty hunter title, I haven't done any non-event related quests or non-pvp dailies) since lvl 11, and I'm currently 46. However, players got sick of rifts pretty quick. Players didn't ever get real serious about the wardstones. Most people hit the level cap by simply running quests and dungeons. There are other ways of doing it, but it's difficult to find others who aren't racing to the end.

Sandbox games need an economy to pay for wars. If there are too many soldiers, and war alone makes money, crafters can't pay you to be a soldier, and few soldiers pay other soldiers to work for them ;P Horizons would have been a great game if there had been some pvp, item decay, and the ability to take land (maybe not destroy it, but simply tax it). The first few months had a great economy, in that "soldiers" made good money from killing, and smart crafters made good money off them, and both needed the other to survive (especially when it came to housing).

I agree that most of us MMO vets approach new MMOs with this light, but Bioware's doing this "fourth-pillar" bit that's gotten a lot of us concerned. We've actually had this pillar for ages for those of us who played sandbox MMOs (Asheron's Call's Shard Defense on Thistledown ring many bells?). When a dev essentially tells me that they can perfect it where I failed, after dealing with developer lead content for years, I'm obviously a skeptic, to say the least.

However, I've spoken to MMO vets, WoWheads, and beta testers, I think the one thing we can all say is "Go into this as if it were KotOR with some multiplayer features, not a new Star Wars MMO." If we get a good play through or two, fine. If there's, *gasp*, a new type of end-game at the end of that, AWESOME! Less chance of getting strung out when you go in expecting little and end up getting a lot then the heartbreak that comes from doing it the other way around ;P

This does nothing for me as an explorer type that prefers sandbox MMOs. Not "it's a nice bonus" but literally nothing. Why do I explore? To find short cuts, hidden passages, little known spawn points that can make me and my friends rich, unerrated terrain to build a fortress on, perfect sniping/hiding spots, etc. Finding some little do-hicky to tell me about the game lore? Bo-ring. Unless the information helps lead to a secret lair that requires a password, is a recipe to make a raid boss my ally, or reveals a hole in my enemy's ultimate fortress no larger than a womp rat, I don't really care about trinkets.

Originally posted by Jackal-79

I dont really see what your trying to do with this poll, but if MMO developers took away Rewards for PvP instanced or world than what would be the point of having PvP at all ? at the end of the day its a game! , Poeple need  something to aim for in a game  and rewards does exactly what it says on the tin " If you PvP you get rewards".

Plus its not the only way to get  good gear there is always end game so no-one is  Forcing you to PvP at all!

If you feel pressured into having do PvP you have to remember that it is a game and you need to enjoy a game, now if i felt like you do then i would quit imo

Asheron's Call. No pvp rewards, no instances, and the FFA server was full of action. It was the most popular server they had. The reason to pvp? Bragging rights. Controlling towns. Building epic stories (ask any Darkfall player about "World War 1" and "Hyperion" and you'll hear a non-RP epic tale that non-gamers can enjoy. Ask a raider about their first Ragnaros kill, and you usually get nap time).

I'll be playing TOR, but not as an MMO perse. The more I hear, the more it seems like this is KotOR 3. It's a single player game with a lobby and some mini-games to do with other people. I don't do pve, and what little pvp I've heard/read sounds like more theme park garbage. I'll make a character, have a fun story, and then put it down like any other single-player RPG. My guildies already I'll be doing this, and I haven't heard anyone else say otherwise ;P

I don't understand the real purpose of this article in particular, but I understand the focus on them. Most of the "what did they do?" stuff is probably from loners and people who join 1 shot guilds, and mainly WoWheads who've had MMOs spoon fed to them.

The Syndicate is a multi-gaming guild that focuses on team work (i.e. personal skills and the ability to mesh) as opposed to purples, and have made connections to the industry along the way (they have their own convention that companies such as SOE attend, if my memory serves me correctly). You can call them sheep, and I understand that, but personally, I've been playing MMOs for over a decade. I'm done with 1 shot guilds that are maybe around for a few expansions and the drama they tend to have. If a guild doesn't even have forums I won't give them a second thought. While I have no interest in joining The Syndicate, their claim to fame is lasting for as long as they have and being fairly balanced, and I deeply respect that. I always get access to top end pvp or raiding, but I rarely take it (or I joy from it for a very small amount of time before I get bored), so multi-gaming guilds are the only things that stick out to me any more.

Ok, new question. I noticed that the game guides for Bounty Hunters and Smugglers seems to indicate that they have access to special quest types (bounties on players for BH and contraband for smugglers). Do other professions have things like this as well?

Yeah, free trial is currently the plan. Just gotta make sure I start it up when I have a lot of time.