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Author Topic: Star Wars: The Old Republic (Bioware MMO) [Was KotOR III/MMO?]
GARTH_MAUL  8362 posts
Title: LACWAC Manager & White Wizard
 Registered: May '02
48381_Luminara (508092)
Date Posted: 7/11 6:27pm Subject: Star Wars: The Old Republic (Bioware MMO) [Was KotOR III/MMO?]
The way Bioware kept talking about the "lone wolf" single player, it sounded to me like TOR actually is going to be KOTOR 3, in a MMO universe.

You can still play (almost?) the entire game by yourself, and you still get your NPC allies who are affected by your good/evil choices.


With respect to the different classes, I will play the game through with different classes because they've promised us that the entire storyline will be different.

 

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Ulicus  7359 posts
Registered: Jul '05
41990_Duron Qel-Droma
Date Posted: 7/12 3:41am Subject: Star Wars: The Old Republic (Bioware MMO) [Was KotOR III/MMO?]
GARTH_MAUL posted:
The way Bioware kept talking about the "lone wolf" single player, it sounded to me like TOR actually is going to be KOTOR 3, in a MMO universe.

They did!?

grin grin grin

Maybe you CAN switch off other people, as I hoped!?

GARTH_MAUL posted:

With respect to the different classes, I will play the game through with different classes because they've promised us that the entire storyline will be different.

Indeed.

 

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GARTH_MAUL  8362 posts
Title: LACWAC Manager & White Wizard
 Registered: May '02
48381_Luminara (508092)
Date Posted: 7/12 8:15am Subject: Star Wars: The Old Republic (Bioware MMO) [Was KotOR III/MMO?]
Well, keep in mind they haven't really given us a lot of hard information at this point, but IIRC, at the E3 debutante party, they kept talking up how the single player KOTOR-lover would be extremely happy, and that it was possible to go through the game by yourself.

 

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DarkLordoftheFins  2121 posts
Title: RPG & Minis Forum D6 Game Master
 Registered: Apr '07
44059_Jedi
Date Posted: 7/12 9:19am Subject: Star Wars: The Old Republic (Bioware MMO) [Was KotOR III/MMO?]
Coming from the PR corner of the biz-world myself I wanna say . . . I see why the say that.

But how shall this work? The monster that is meant for you and two tanks, a healer, a damage dealer and a group-coordinator to defeat can also be defeated by . . . you? Alone?

If you enter an instance alone you can deal with the same monsters meant for groups five time that big?

With any character?


And the have said twice now, they will have NO single-player mode . . . so, I wanna hear how tihs is meant to work. Again, same thing was said about Lotro. And was very, very untrue. Only way to do it is advance VER HIGH and then go to levels that are a peic of pie for you . . .

 

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Ulicus  7359 posts
Registered: Jul '05
41990_Duron Qel-Droma
Date Posted: 7/12 9:31am Subject: Star Wars: The Old Republic (Bioware MMO) [Was KotOR III/MMO?] - Date Edited: 7/12 9:37am (1 edits total) Edited By: Ulicus
How is it remotely hard for each class' main story to be soloable (as I imagine would actually have to be the case) but with certain side missions and assignments, not vital to those plots, that would require the teaming of a multiple classes?

I suppose BioWare keep saying that they want to bring the "Fourth Piller" to THE multiplayer experience (as it currently stands) but I really can't imagine them doing anything other than creating a distinct "BioWare Multiplayer Experience". I really don't think this is going to end up looking that much like "a story heavy WOW" at all. I imagine it'll look far more like many interweaved BioWare titles (read: interactive stories) that allow crossovers.

 

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DarkLordoftheFins  2121 posts
Title: RPG & Minis Forum D6 Game Master
 Registered: Apr '07
44059_Jedi
Date Posted: 7/12 12:15pm Subject: Star Wars: The Old Republic (Bioware MMO) [Was KotOR III/MMO?]
Actually there is only one thing that has mpre fans than SW. It´s powerplaying masses have made WOW a cashcow and let´s be honest . . . THAT IS WHAT THEY WANNA HAVE, TOO.

So, I expect totally that this will be a leveling-driven game. The hints are already there. (What do you think they mean by -certain armors which become avaiable later- other than . . . when you leveled over 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and when the expansions come out over 100.)

There are also plenty of game-play pictures where you see the typical group of one soldiers, one smuggler and two Jedi (I think one will be the healer and one the damage dealer).

That´s what the paying customers actually DEMAND of such games. Even Lotro, which began without many such elements, quickly implemented them.

 

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Zorrixor  4362 posts
Registered: Sep '04
42757_Prince Xizor
Date Posted: 7/12 12:16pm Subject: Star Wars: The Old Republic (Bioware MMO) [Was KotOR III/MMO?] - Date Edited: 7/12 12:25pm (1 edits total) Edited By: Zorrixor
I expect to get around the "you need a tank, a healer, a pair of DPS" problem is where the companion element comes in. Chances are though, NPC Dork Jedi is unlikely to be anywhere near as good a tank as an actual player, so the solo route is likely to have its disadvantages.

They've also done something similar (though not on the solo extreme) in WOTLK whereby all the same instances come in 5-man and 10-man versions. The 5-man are, as you would expect, easier to run as you only have to find half as many people; the 10-man versions are, again as you would expect, naturally a bit tougher and with a few more mobs and/or mobs with more hit points. (Though there is a counter argument that the 10-mans are actually easier, since there is greater room for error, e.g. if your healer dies in a 5-man, you're dead; if your healer dies in a 10-man, someone else might be able to step in instead.)

The 10-man raid versions also give higher quality loot than the regular 5-man versions. There's also similar dualities between 10- and 25-man raid zones of the same raid. And then there's the Heroic Mode versions where everything is hyped up and made a lot, lot harder, and the rewards a lot, lot better too.

What I'd like to see happen is that BioWare try to appease the hardcore solo, story-driven crowd (who potentially otherwise wouldn't play TOR at all) with kind of the "easy mode" of NPC companions and fairly straightforward gameplay (and loot that will leave you a pushover at max level who is still in rainbow clown gear), with the hardcore MMO crowd who get their kicks from being better than other players by leaving the decent, high quality, cool looking Revanite sets for the multiplayer modes of the same stuff.

 
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Ulicus  7359 posts
Registered: Jul '05
41990_Duron Qel-Droma
Date Posted: 7/12 1:42pm Subject: Star Wars: The Old Republic (Bioware MMO) [Was KotOR III/MMO?]
DarkLordoftheFins posted:
Actually there is only one thing that has mpre fans than SW. It´s powerplaying masses have made WOW a cashcow and let´s be honest . . . THAT IS WHAT THEY WANNA HAVE, TOO.

The vast majority of that crowd is WoWs forever and they'd be catered to by the aforementioned 'crossover' stuff, anyway. I didn't mean to imply that they'd be limited, or something you couldn't dip into whenever you wanted. *Shrug*

DarkLordoftheFins posted:

So, I expect totally that this will be a leveling-driven game. The hints are already there. (What do you think they mean by -certain armors which become avaiable later- other than . . . when you leveled over 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and when the expansions come out over 100.)

All BioWare's RPGs have been are level AND story-driven. What's your point? confused

Spectre Gear X was only available after you hit level 50 in Mass Effect. That was all single player.

I was more than capable of Soloing Diablo I and II, as well.

DarkLordoftheFins posted:

There are also plenty of game-play pictures where you see the typical group of one soldiers, one smuggler and two Jedi (I think one will be the healer and one the damage dealer).

And we've flat out been told that we have NPC allies, so, again - where's the inability to solo, here?

DarkLordoftheFins posted:

That´s what the paying customers actually DEMAND of such games. Even Lotro, which began without many such elements, quickly implemented them.

Again, the inability to combine such with soloing is in the... what? You've yet to explain. My point of contention is that they could easily make the "main plot" for every class (and each class has a different story, so we've been led to believe) soloable. You seem to have digressed.

At the end of the day, BioWare aren't going to change into "Blizzard 2.0" because they're almost as much an RPG brand as they are game developer at this point.

Zorrixor posted:

What I'd like to see happen is that BioWare try to appease the hardcore solo, story-driven crowd (who potentially otherwise wouldn't play TOR at all) with kind of the "easy mode" of NPC companions and fairly straightforward gameplay (and loot that will leave you a pushover at max level who is still in rainbow clown gear), with the hardcore MMO crowd who get their kicks from being better than other players by leaving the decent, high quality, cool looking Revanite sets for the multiplayer modes of the same stuff.

You'll likely look pretty cool whatever you're wearing. Well, except for the headgear. BioWare were never very good with headgear. tongue

Though why you'd like "rainbow clown gear" to be in the game at all is beyond me. Awful equipment with terrible stats is already something no-one in their right mind would want, even if it looked really cool. tongue

 

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DarkLordoftheFins  2121 posts
Title: RPG & Minis Forum D6 Game Master
 Registered: Apr '07
44059_Jedi
Date Posted: 7/12 3:48pm Subject: Star Wars: The Old Republic (Bioware MMO) [Was KotOR III/MMO?]
I´ll answer this short. You haven´t played MMO´s have you? Guilds? Instances?

When I talk about powerplaying and leveling I mean POWERPLAYING.

And if I talk about instances I talk about strategic group games that can´t be replaced by NPC´s. It is a coordinative effort of several human players who are all playing their part . . . it is what is the fun in mmo´s. It is actually what MMO is about for the millions of players out there. Something you cannot do alone. And we already know there will be instances. And we already know that there will be special "single-player-instances" (likr Lotro had) which means that the "usual-instance" is for groups. Just as always.

Not a bad thing. Perfectly fine. That´s what a MMO-buyer expects. I just wonder how this can be combined with SW background. Or the single player mode (of which they already said there won´t be any like in EWN, so what is it like?).

Therefore I mean no offense, but I perfectly made my point. I just used only vocabulary you decode differently.

TOR will be based on the usual mmo-imperative of specialized characters. The classes are defined by skills and trade their qualities to each other. They play together. Or do you have any information that this has changed?

 

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Ulicus  7359 posts
Registered: Jul '05
41990_Duron Qel-Droma
Date Posted: 7/12 8:25pm Subject: Star Wars: The Old Republic (Bioware MMO) [Was KotOR III/MMO?] - Date Edited: 7/12 8:26pm (1 edits total) Edited By: Ulicus
DarkLordoftheFins posted:
I´ll answer this short. You haven´t played MMO´s have you? Guilds? Instances?

When I talk about powerplaying and leveling I mean POWERPLAYING.

And if I talk about instances I talk about strategic group games that can´t be replaced by NPC´s. It is a coordinative effort of several human players who are all playing their part . . . it is what is the fun in mmo´s. It is actually what MMO is about for the millions of players out there. Something you cannot do alone. And we already know there will be instances. And we already know that there will be special "single-player-instances" (likr Lotro had) which means that the "usual-instance" is for groups. Just as always.

Not a bad thing. Perfectly fine. That´s what a MMO-buyer expects. I just wonder how this can be combined with SW background. Or the single player mode (of which they already said there won´t be any like in EWN, so what is it like?).

Therefore I mean no offense, but I perfectly made my point. I just used only vocabulary you decode differently.

TOR will be based on the usual mmo-imperative of specialized characters. The classes are defined by skills and trade their qualities to each other. They play together. Or do you have any information that this has changed?


Right. I'm not saying any of the above won't be in the game, or even featured heavily. I have only said that it is more than likely that one will be able to complete the main class specific plot of their character solo.

Age of Conan ring any bells? Or when you speak of MMOs do you just mean WoW?

And before you telling me what I have or haven't played, have you played any BioWare titles? Because, I don't know what you're expecting, but I can tell you right now that this will end up being the BioWare RPG experience gone multiplayer. That means a heavy emphasis on the story, making decisions that affect the course of that story and long conversations with NPC companions if you so choose and even "romancable" NPCs.

That will probably be contained within the class specific plots, granted, but I expect that they will be substantial in and of themselves (KotOR 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 - as Ohlen said). Obviously there'll be an overarching "galactic level" meta plot that involves everyone but I'm not talking about being able to get through that solo.

You caused no offence, you're just baffling me.

 

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Zorrixor  4362 posts
Registered: Sep '04
42757_Prince Xizor
Date Posted: 7/12 11:33pm Subject: Star Wars: The Old Republic (Bioware MMO) [Was KotOR III/MMO?]
It's unclear if there will even be the ordinary Tank/Healer/DPS dynamic anyway. WoW does that because WoW has a ton of classes. TOR only has 4 per side, which, okay, does provide room for one of each... but I don't see it working that way. They're not just going to make Jedi and Sith ordinary swordsmen tanks who do hardly any damage and that's that.

Jedi almost certainly will be able to be levelled into either a duellist, a Force-throwing DPS, or some form of healer. So, that throws the usual class balance in WoW problem out the door, and allows having toned down instances for single players more feasible.

Obviously the Star Forge would be easier with 3 real players. That doesn't stop your companions in KOTOR1 helping you run it, nor does it stop you battling down hordes of droids. But in a 10-man instance chances are those droids would have 10x the hit points and actually drop decent gear.

But what Uli said about how WoW's hardcore community are WoW's "forever" I would to a certain extent agree with. There are a lot of WoW players who are tired, fed up, and in need of a new game (I'm one of them), but there are also others who will lambaste every new MMO that comes along, play WAR for an afternoon and say it sucks, criticise TOR as going to be crap and no better than SWG, and who have ultimately invested too much time, sacrificed too much of their real life, and maybe pumped in oodles of real life money into buying gold that they're just very reluctant to walk away from it.

Which roughly translates to how unless TOR is truly mind blowingly revolutionary in some way it will not draw the truly hardcore WoW players, only the ones who are already fed up of it (which I can't say I expect, as even if it DOES deliver on the single player experience, that isn't something a hardcore MMO WoW player would care about). So, chances are as WoW continues to churn out new expansions, and when Blizzard announce their next gen MMO (due out 2012 I think), it will cause a lot of those WoW players to not be all that interested in "another SW MMO that will probably just be a flop like SWG anyway".

Which means BioWare don't necessarily need to care all that much about attracting giant hosts of WoW players... as it probably wouldn't ever be able to achieve that anyway.

 
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DarkLordoftheFins  2121 posts
Title: RPG & Minis Forum D6 Game Master
 Registered: Apr '07
44059_Jedi
Date Posted: 7/13 5:12am Subject: Star Wars: The Old Republic (Bioware MMO) [Was KotOR III/MMO?]
Well, then let us see what happens and we will soon know who is right, yes?

As an answer to questions. I have played every Bioware title of the last few years. I also realize that the guys doing them are sitting on Mass Effect II right now wink I also am aware of most MMO´s out there as it has been part of my job in the last year. Played most of them.

AgeOfConan I know only one thing about though. It wasn´t a good success. People will try to avoid doing their mistakes.

I further on haven´t meant WoW as more than an example. Warhammer, Lotro, DAoC and GuildWars weren´t that different. It is a genre. Like Half Life will never be Third Person. That isn´t bad. What I pointed out is, they all have talked about single-playability. It is usually part of a marketing concept. Once these single-player guys are online they´ll find out how much fun coop is and they stay. For a while. MMO is about marketing. The whole thing only works by attracting players.

As a closing comment I´d suggest someone translates the interview in the german game-magazine´s (basically thesame in all of them, strangely). You´d hate what they say about it. wink

I totally hope you guys are right, though. I just don´t think you will be. Having Mythic and a Lotro-designer enter the process isn´t making me more optimistic.

Anyway, I don´t need to dicuss theories. The first alpha-games of an instance have already been done and the journalists ae just not allowed to print them yet. Once these articles are out we will know what is going on.

 

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Ulicus  7359 posts
Registered: Jul '05
41990_Duron Qel-Droma
Date Posted: 7/13 6:04am Subject: Star Wars: The Old Republic (Bioware MMO) [Was KotOR III/MMO?]
^^^

That's fair. peace

 

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Magnuskn  734 posts
Registered: Jul '02
43715_Shado Vao
Date Posted: 7/13 11:04am Subject: Star Wars: The Old Republic (Bioware MMO) [Was KotOR III/MMO?]
Whatever Bioware does with the game, I only hope it doesn´t degenerate into the raid-to-play design WoW has. While I do a weekly Naxx25 PUG raid, it´s three to four hours spent doing the exact same stuff for some chance at loot.

So far, SWTORs main feature is the storytelling approach. Let´s hope they focus on that somehow for their endgame, instead mind-numbing hours of raiding the same bosses over and over.

 

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Zorrixor  4362 posts
Registered: Sep '04
42757_Prince Xizor
Date Posted: 7/13 11:54am Subject: Star Wars: The Old Republic (Bioware MMO) [Was KotOR III/MMO?]
Well... we already know that there is going to be some kind of group-quest-direction-dynamic-type-thing. That might potentially add to why you'd want to replay the instance... as you might not have wanted to kill the guy but redeem him or something.

Exactly whether that will turn out to be a positive reason for you to want to replay it, or just piss people off when every time they play the instance everyone else opts to do something different... that... could in fact just cause arguments. It'd mean not only needing the right gear to drop, and winning the roll, and having enough DKP or whatever... but also needing people to decide on the right conversation choice that you wanted to select.

 
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