With the announcement that Star Wars: The Old Republic will be released sometime after April 2011…I’m thinking, “Ut oh. Here we go again!â€Â Instead of a somewhat steady stream of major titles being released the last couple years, it looks like they’ll all be released within months of each other in 2011. You might have your favorites and be able to pick one. But for me, it’s going to be overwhelming and expensive. And I’m looking forward to it…
Category: Star Wars: The Old Republic
A long time ago…
…in a galaxy far, far away, the NGE hit Star Wars: Galaxies. The date: November 15th 2005¹.
Five years later, despite server closures and merges and a minimal population, the game is still going and content has still been added to the game including, amongst other additions, the planet of Hoth which went live on November 20th 2008. The latest patch, Game Update 18, was released last month.
Continue reading A long time ago…
Of Sausage, Fandom, and Vision
Long ago, I saw an interview with one of the makers of Casablanca, in which he explained that had they known they were making one of the great classics, they would have done a better job of it. Production was messy and rushed; Ingrid Bergman displayed real ambivalence between the male leads because the film was only half-scripted when filming began. We now know what “if he could do it over again” looks like: the Star Wars prequels and Greedo shoots first.
Reading the recent rumor-mongering and the trolling, flaming wreck of its comments section, I was struck by how people seized on a SW:TOR aside in a WAR post and how emotionally vested some people are in (and, quite vocally, against) Star Wars. It is strangely circular to have competing religions of fandom and hatedom exist around a setting that is only important because so many people are emotionally invested in it. Continue reading Of Sausage, Fandom, and Vision
Quote of the Week: The Problem in a Nutshell
I’ll buy it, I’ll play it, but…I’m expecting the ‘gameplay’ to be garbage. =(
— iLkRehp
(The quote refers to SW:TOR, but “the problem” is general.)
The Roads After PAX
For my small viewfinder, not much news came out of PAX. Perhaps the biggest thing was the announcement that ArenaNet was making an iPad/smartphone app for Guild Wars 2 with such neuromantic functionalities such as talking to guild mates, scouring the auction house, and watching guild mates play via an overworld map. I was going to write an small post just on that news alone, but it wasn’t very meaty. What it’s really going to do is allow those of us pressed for game time due to other obligations to keep tabs on our guild until they get to that event where 40 people need to take down a dragon (or sharktopus). Then we can sign on for half an hour to play a very intense event without having had to help with all the lead-ins. It might sound selfish, but if the other option is just not playing at all for fear of only having “lead-ins” then I think it’s a fair trade-off.
I severely digress… although there was not that much news, there was lots of design-level discussion. My favorite was a Guild Wars 2 Event workshop where a small amount of fans came to learn about the event system and then work together in a brainstorming session to create an event system. Oh, and some nice person recorded the whole thing. The developers at PAX seem very open, and it is refreshing hearing from them instead of through the marketing grist-mill.
SWTOR: Inter-planet travel
I want to take a break from playing tons of games and drooling over E3 coverage to speculate about the way players in Star Wars The Old Republic will travel between planets. With the announcement of player ships, there was immediate speculation about space flight. However, developers were quick to point out that ships do not mean you can fly. Players may walk onto their ship, click where they want to go and sit through a loading screen until they see a cinematic of their ship landing. In fact, there is some strong reason to believe that this is the case.
Escaping The Long Shadow – Player Housing
The history of player housing in MMOs is pretty interesting. One could even start further back with player-owned zones in MUDs and what not. Yet, as one of the oldest bulletpoint features there seems to be no collective standard on what player housing should entail. It gets even rockier in the fact that the biggest MMO of all does not even have player housing, leading to the possibility that there are millions of MMO players trained to care less about owning a piece of real estate. Yet, there is hope. The two biggest MMO beacons on the horizon, Guild Wars 2 and Star Wars: The Old Republic, are both bringing player housing back as a bulletpoint feature, but each in their own dramatic way.
Moving the Cheese
With any luck, Bioware will tell the lot of us off and take The Old Republic in a direction that current MMO players will find inconceivable. In the best of all possible worlds, you will recognize its connection to the original EverQuest the way you recognize the connection between Pac-Man and Quake. Because we have ruined these games by defining the RPG out and setting for killing 10,000 rats because it will improve our gearscore.
Darren senses that Bioware is missing the point of MMOs. Good for them. Our niche market is a horror of trying to stretch out the fun instead of making it more fun. Portal did not become a huge hit because it made you execute the same maneuver 50 times before moving to the next level.
World of Warcraft did not become a huge hit by catering to then-current MMO players. It so vastly expanded the market that it effectively created the whole thing; which has had more players, World of Warcraft or every earlier western MMO combined? Bioware is looking for that kind of success, and they are going to succeed or fail big. They are not going to settle for a few hundred thousand players. While there are a lot of developers that could live quite nicely with that playerbase, as a corporation they are not devoting resources to niches. They can try to poach a few million current MMO players, or they can take the market in a different direction.
I have no idea if the game will be good, successful, or even something that I want to play. But I will be disappointed if it ends up appealing to the current MMO market instead of trying to reach different players.
: Zubon
House of Leaves has the best dedication page ever.
Alganon: Blatant Plagiarism
Thanks to the folks over at F13.net it has been pointed out just how blatant the Alganon folks are being with their plagiaristic press releases.
Remember this statement from the Alganon press release? Note it is dated Wednesday, April 28, 2010.
“Traditionally, massively multiplier online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars – combat, exploration and character progression,” Derek Smart continued. “In Alganon, in addition to these we’ve added the fourth pillar to the equation; a story. We delivered a fun, immersive adventure that gamers expect in a top quality massively multiplayer online game. To top it all off, we’re not done yet. A whole new adventure with new updates will follow soon, starting with a consignment house, new classes, PvP and much more.”
Now check out this statement from the SWTOR folks, dated October 21, 2008.
“Traditionally, massively multiplayer online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars – combat, exploration and character progression,” said Dr. Ray Muzyka, Co-Founder and General Manager/CEO of BioWare and General Manager/Vice President of Electronic Arts Inc., “In Star Wars: The Old Republic, we’re fusing BioWare’s heritage of critically-acclaimed storytelling with the amazing pedigree of Lucasfilm and LucasArts, and adding a brand-new fourth pillar to the equation – story. At the same time, we will still deliver all the fun features and activities that fans have come to expect in a AAA massively multiplayer online game. To top it all off, Star Wars: The Old Republic is set in a very exciting, dynamic period in the Star Wars universe.”
Sad.
Update: Here is the official response and conclusion.
Still sad.
– Ethic
Alganon: No New Ideas
Not that long ago, this quote appeared on Massively:
The December first launch of the game “should never have happened,” and Smart is working to fix this. Among other things, he says the “WoW lookalike rubbish” is gone. The design team is throwing it out and working in a completely different direction to give the game its own unique look and feel. “You don’t go competing with WoW when you don’t have a WoW sized budget or the manpower to match.”
They copied World of Warcraft, realized it was a dumb idea, and are going to take all that WoW rubbish out.
Then I get the Alganon launch email and it has this quote:
“Traditionally, massively multiplier online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars – combat, exploration and character progression,” Derek Smart continued. “In Alganon, in addition to these we’ve added the fourth pillar to the equation; a story.
Where have I heard that before? Oh right, Star Wars:The Old Republic. Also, nice spelling. Multiplier?
Traditionally MMOs are built on three pillars; Exploration, Combat, and Progression. We at BioWare and LucasArts believe there is a fourth pillar: Story.
Do they have any original ideas? They didn’t have a WoW budget but they do have a SWTOR budget?
– Ethic