Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Once and for all: SW TOR will be Massively Multiplayer too and support group play!
MMO.Maverick
Member CommonPosts: 7,619
Those posts popping up from people being oh so sure that SW TOR will just be a singleplayer game and not have all the usual ingredients of a MMO are getting tiresome.
If people use that argument to convince themselves that they won't be playing the game, then I have no problem with it at all: better that they decide beforehand that this game is not for their like than constantly whine ingame and thus annoy others who do want to experience SW TOR for all it offers.
Doesn't mean that the 'SW TOR will be nothing more than a singleplayer game' belief is right though: SW ToR devs have stated repeatedly that the solo play is possible and enjoyable but that they wanted to encourage and stimulate group play.
A quote from Massively out of the many about it available:
'Bioware further announced their plans to push the small group experience in almost every possible way.'
Another example is the E3 Hands On Group Play experience, that some demo testers had.
From their story I could glean the following:
grouping will be possible and enjoyable from the start
you can experience your story line adventures very well with more players, it even opens up more options
the dialogues won't be just the static dialogue, but also have the interactive intervene options that Mass Effect 2 has
even if the other planets will be massively larger compared to the starter planets, those starter planets are large already, since it took the player almost up to an hour to cross it from one end to the hour
crafting might include weapons and ammunition crafting (the 'dud' grenates)
moving from public space to instanced personal quest areas and back is seamless and feels organic
the AI of the NPC's is smarter than the regular MMO, making NPC's make use of the environment
Read his experiences for yourself
E3 Hands On Group Play Experience: how it felt
-I started out with my regular attack, the rocket launcher ability that we have all seen, as well as the flamethrower. I also had the ability which lets me “vent” the heat I build up from using my abilities. (If you don’t already know, the Bounty hunter has a heat gauge, the more you use your gadgets the closer to overheating you get, think of it like a reverse mana bar)
-It wasn’t 5 minutes into my game before Samm who was playing next to me went “Hey... is that you?” Sure enough we had bumped right into each other... /invite
-So we grouped together and decided we were going to take this on as a multiplayer game. We headed out and decided we were going to focus on my quests as a bounty hunter since he was playing the Imperial Agent and we already had a feel for his quests from Tuesday. I stopped to notice the level 37 Nautolan female NPC who was hanging out in the building we started in.
-Inside the same building as we were exiting, we noticed a terminal that let you bind yourself to it. We assume that using an ability, probably the “Call Shuttle” ability that is common to all classes, would teleport you back to that location with a really long cool down timer.
-I also saw a bounty terminal, which when I clicked on it gave me some text about a bounty I could do, and I could either take the bounty or pass on it. I passed.
-We went outside and approached a small hut that had someone who I was supposed to talk to in it for my main quest. Initially it had a big red barrier in front of it for Samm, but a green one for myself. After I walked into it however it then became blue for Samm, allowing him to come in behind me.
-It looks like main class story NPC’s that give you your main story quests might not let you engage in multiplayer dialogue, but from what we saw everything else did. When one player engages a conversation with an NPC that is multiplayer dialogue capable, a green circle appears around them on the ground, and a timer pops up for both players. Since Samm initiated the conversation, I had about a minute and a half to get to him and the NPC and right click the NPC to participate. I could have clicked the “x” in the countdown timer to discard it and let him go on without me, or he could click a button that lets him stop waiting for me and continue on with just him in the conversation.
-It looked like a random roll of the dice, but I don't think it was. We had seen stuff about “Social Points” being acquired while we played together, and we think that has an impact on your conversations.. perhaps giving a boost on your dice rolls.
-We went to the spaceport, as part of my quest. We fought our way into one of the hangers (Samm couldn’t go in because it was my quest, but once I went in it opened up for him to follow me) where my target was standing near his ship repairing it, and I engaged him in conversation. One of my options had “[Wound]” at the end of the sentence.. so of course I picked that dialogue choice and sure enough my character quick drew his gun after a tense stare down and shot the guy, knocking him down and wounding him a bit, this option was like a hybrid between normal conversation options, and the quicktime mouse events in Mass Effect 2. This gave me the JUST the edge I needed in the battle, because after I did that his henchmen appeared from the other side of the ship... but Samm was there hiding behind a bunch of boxes, and he popped out and distracted them from cover while I fired my rocket to push back down the main “boss”. Then one of the NPC’s started closing in on Samm and was about to nullify Samm’s cover.. so I ran over there as fast as I could and used my flame thrower to force them back a bit so Samm had more padding. I then turned around to check on the Boss who had just gotten up and started firing again, putting severe damage into me. I fired another rocket to keep him down as Samm finished off the henchmen. Now that they were gone Samm was able to throw me a bone with the boss and put a laser on him that would increase damage done to him by 20%. A few blaster shots later he was down.
-I looted his corpse and acquired a new blaster pistol that did more damage. I think I went from a gun that did 14-26 damage to one that did 16-30 damage. It was a bind on equip item. Also somewhere in between all of that I looted some new bracers which fancied my character up a little more and gave me some more armor. Later on in my play session I managed to score a much better chest piece. Taking my armor from like 8 armor all the way up to 26. While we are talking armor.. I noticed at one point in my character sheet there was a green bar that displayed my armor was 90%.. not sure what that means though, Samm thinks it could be durability. Also one of the armor slots looked like it could be for an eye piece or goggles. It was an image of a head with a robotic looking eye piece on, it wasn’t for a helmet because there was already a different slot for that.
-After finishing him off, Samm went and explored around in the other hanger, where he thinks your Player Ship might end up being. I went on looking around in the first hanger and thought “I wonder if I could climb that mountain and come out the other side”.. basically to get to the hanger we had to go through a building that tunneled through the mountain, so I wanted to be able to go over the mountain back to the other side. Sure enough I was able to.. but you wont be able to in the full game. It became clear that that will be a closed off area that we wont be able to get up to, because we could see the edge of the ocean and some of the trees were floating a bit. So by release expect that to be closed off. Either way we were able to do it, so there is no visual trickery going on to pretend that there is a big mountain. Samm ended up killing himself or something but I was too busy going back down the mountain to the ground. I noticed some falling damage but my character rolled in a cool way when I landed.
-We began to split up a little bit and explore the world. It was much larger than I thought it would be, and the rumour on the street is that this is one of the smallest of the planets. It took a little under an hour to roam from one end of Hutta to the next, but that was on pretty much a straight line with only a couple little side ventures. To cover every inch of the map, would take a pretty good chunk of time, and that's if you stayed outside and didn't go into any of the massive interior sections. It looks like the highest mobs just running around there were around level 7 or 8, so I would imagine you would be ready for other parts of the galaxy a little after reaching that level.
-Because we grouped up we were able to venture further in than if we were alone. We saw a few different creatures that were really fun to fight, and had some great animations. Some of the creatures knock down animations were a bit on the cartoony side however. There were also some larger mining robots that walked around on three legs which were fun to fight, but the best was the large Chemilizards, once you fire at them they would begin to charge at me, and I would then fire a rocket just in time to knock them out of the way. Think Jango Fett dodging the Reek in AOTC.
-Early on in our adventures I had found a NPC by a bunch of speeders, he had a purple icon above his head. I right clicked him and it said something along the lines of “Location stored..” I tried again and it said “No connecting routes..” I think you can see where this is going. Since we were grouped up and working together, we were able to cover a lot of ground, and Samm found a second Speeder Vendor with the same logo above his head. He tried to use it thinking he could ride.. but no dice. However he had not talked to the first NPC like I did... so I ran over there and BANG! A map of the area popped up with a line connecting from where I was with that NPC back to the original one, and clicking on it would cost me 20 credits. We all know what this is. I clicked on the location and I was off on my speeder.. it was on rails and moved pretty fast. I was able to look around and everything, and before you knew it I was back at the first NPC... so I rode it back again. I think that makes me the first and maybe only person outside of Bioware to ride a speeder!
-I noticed that in one of the major friendly areas there were a bunch of level 50 NPC’s, I got the gut feeling of “Okay, this must be the max level right now” that comes from my past MMO experience. Usually NPC’s in major cities, especially guards and important NPC’s tend to be at max level to prevent them from dieing easily or to allow them to be strong enough to defend the area from gankers. Really I am sure the max level for the game is still in the works, and even if they have one locked in it might be higher or lower than 50 for players. But its something worth thinking about.
-To finish our grand adventure (we probably could have stayed playing the game for another hour if we wanted, but we wanted to spend that time with some people from Bioware instead, which you will be seeing a couple more videos soon from that) we thought “Hey... lets go into Fa’anthra’s temple and see if we can take down a big fat Hutt!” We got there and knew it wasn’t going to be a walk in the park, and we would have to work together to make it through the level 7 characters with our lower level characters. The NPC’s at the entrance and inside seemed to be amped up a bit. They were taking cover which forced me to flush them out with the flamethrower while Samm focused on sniping from a distance and weakening the tougher tank type enemies.
-We got to the throne room and.. he wasn’t there. We could see what looks to be his chair but it was empty. I think Bioware removed him for this gameplay demo.. Darn. But that didn't stop us from heading to the elevator that we saw on the map. We were curious if we would finally get a loading screen from that. So we went there and it asked us where we wanted to go.. it gave us no options.. But Samm figured out that if he pressed the Space Bar it would show us our options anyways. So we went straight down to the bottom to a place called the Beasts Lair. No loading screens, we just popped down to that floor and we were there. I immediately pressed “m” to see what we might be dealing with, and ahead of us was a giant open cave like room.. so we ran in there guns blazing as it was crawling with large Chemilizards, there were (I believe they were called this atleast..) “Ancient Chemilizards” that looked kind of like the creature Obi-Wan rides in Revenge of the Sith. But it was at this point that we had to get off so we could make it in time for our interview.
-Samm played around with Armor and Weapon vendors, and also played around with something called a “Bazaar” which was what the Auction House terminals were called in SWG. I will let him go into those details on his article. He also found a blueprint vendor, well that's what I assume when he said “oh a blueprint vendor”...
-It appears all classes will have a revive ability, which lets you revive a fallen party member while out of combat. -I was killing guys around a tree and noticed I was getting shot at from in the bushes of a tall tree, I looked around and saw an NPC standing on a big thick branch shooting at me.. so I fired my rocket to knock him off of it and he fell to the ground, so that I could rip at him from there. Not sure if it was a bug or intentional, but it was pretty sweet.
-Several times I looted a “dud grenade” which had a tooltip that hinted at the possibility of a way to make the grenade usable.
-As a bounty hunter, I was able to use Heavy, Medium, or Light armor after I leveled up once. I think initially I was only able to use light armor, but I could be wrong.
-My game ended up crashing to the desktop pretty early on, a little while after we grouped up. Someone from Bioware came to assist me in getting the game back up. So I was able to see some of that. The icon for the game (come on, this probably will all change but its fun to be nerdy about it anyway) was the helmet of the bounty hunter that we have been seeing so much of. When he clicked on it, it launched the website launch.swtor.com and he was able to launch the game from there... The character select screen popped up and it had a cool look to it. It shows your character model on the entire left side of the screen, and on the right side of the screen was your character’s name and level. There were plenty more slots for characters, I want to say 8, but I am not sure. Either way that's probably going to change between now and release. Then FINALLY I saw a loading screen. It was just of some concept art and had a description of what the bounty hunter class is, again I didn’t dwell on all the details of that because I am counting on that changing too.
-Going in and out of instanced areas was again very seamless. Obviously no loading screens help with that but, I ALWAYS felt like I was in the MMO world and never like I was in my own personal instance (even though at times I was). This game gave me a feeling of “on the other side of that wall there could be something going on with other players”. This is good news for anyone who was hoping for that big living world feeling, which a lot of MMO’s have strayed from lately.
-Overall, this play session taught me that SWTOR really is an MMO, and not a single-player game. We were able to group together from the very start of the game and start adventuring together through quests and we could explore all over the place together. Let me assure all of you that this game is an MMO.. I know there has been a lot of concern about that, and I think that most of those concerned people will be very satisfied once they get their hands on the game.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Comments
Thank you for this post. I follow the game tight and I knew it was going to be a group play friendly game as well. But thank you for silencing the ignorant posters that tell us it will be a singeplayer game. Not only that but I had not read this article about the group play experience and actually learned a little more about TOR so thank you for that.
MMOs played: Too many
Watch List: FFXIV, CoH:GR, GW2, SWTOR, TERA, Earthrise
This will silence nothing...lol. People have still been screaming the total opposite idea for the past few months now.
Not that I'm disagreeing with you exactly, but two people playing together is an mmo?
Until it releases or at least gets into open beta, neither of us knows for sure. But I keep seeng all these "proof it's an mmo" posts which never have anything more than two people playing together.
Show me hundreds of people on screen at once running around doing their own things. Hell, show me 50. Show me full groups doing content. Show me something substantial, don't show me two people playing together and suddenly calling it an mmo.
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.-
-And on the 8th day, man created God.-
I thought it was more the comments that the "private" instances worked seamlessly without loading screens, and that there were large open worlds and that it FELT like an MMO to the people playing it.
What? You think they are going to limit these open worlds to 10 players or something?? Not really sure where you are coming from tbh...
Oh, I have no illusion at all that people who want to believe that SW TOR will be nothing more than a singleplayer experience will keep on believing that it is a singleplayer game no matter what.
And I agree, we will only know things more accurately how the game will be when the beta arrives.
But let's be fair, that applies to all the upcoming games, how 'massively multiplayer' have we seen of most of them that they will be? Even of a GW2, TERA and Rift we have hardly seen or experienced any group play, let alone 'massively multiplayer'.
Now I think there were other TOR videos and reports that were about a full team in action, not gonna look them up though, for those who really like to know, google and youtube are your friend.
As I said, some people will always keep on believing what they believe no matter if evidence or other people's experiences point to the contrary.
So if some people will want to believe that SW TOR is a singleplayer game and that anything that Bioware representatives state is automatically suspect, then by all means, they should do that.
The game devs and spokespersons have mentioned again and again how important Bioware thinks group play and SW ToR having the feel of a MMO world is. It's everyone's own choice to opt whether to believe them or not.
This post was merely to show how testers who played it had their little team experience, for those interested and wondering whether group play is there from the beginning and how it can be.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
If that didn't blow the OP's cover of being a die hard fan of an unpublished game...
The term "fanboy" in my view only applies to those fanatically defending a game before it even is ... played.
In the meantime, we - as players - MUST stay very critical over any hyped up feature of any new unpublished game.
It is the only right way in which consumers can be protected against the duds we had to endure in the last 5 years.
Certainly when EA is concerned.
Its embarrassing when an NPC compliments you in an MMo, the only relevant, cool and epic things come from players whispering you Grtz, mate, we did it. copyright Pilnkplonk
And honestly, that's why I don't expect SWToR to be any different. So far, seems every damn new mmo that's been announced and then released has turned out to be anything BUT an mmo, i.e. APB, Global Agenda. So whle I do find it hard to believe Bioware would try to call a singleplayer game an mmo, I'm not going to discount it either until I see it actually come out as an mmo.
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.-
-And on the 8th day, man created God.-
Good write, and the game sounds pretty far, but I'm going to have to agree, two people or even a full group write up doesn't make a game "massively multi-player", I'll wait for the youtube video or article about the 50 on 50 (or 200 on 200) battles.
They probably have it, and we'll find out soon enough I'm sure.
Regardless, sounds like the game experience is shaping up pretty well, only quesiton I have is can they really create enough content to keep players occupied over the long haul, or will this be more of a 2 or 3 month and your done sort of game?
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
You can play 10 mins a day then you can enjoy it over years *caugh* *caugh* :P
But so far ive heard / seen / read it will contain same gear treadmill like another game done it.
You just need to read the thread about bounty hunter and bla bla bla you will see that you dont have to mess up with bounty hunters that wear specific gear. Sounds extremly similar to me :P
EvE doors
See the best doors on EvE-on!
The definition of an MMO is "A massively multiplayer online game. A computer game in which a large number of players can simultaneously interact in a persistent world". It does not matter if you play it solo or in a group its still an MMO. This makes APB, Global Agenda and SWTOR no matter how you play it an MMO. They could make it a game completely group dependent, people will just 2, 3, 4, 5 ,6 box characters. Its people perspectives, way of playing, time, friends, guilds, etc that make you solo play or group play not necessarily the game.
If that didn't blow the XXX cover of being a die hard hater of an unpublished game...
The term "hater" in my view only applies to those fanatically attacking a game before it even is ... played.
See, it can go both ways.
I am not defending or attacking any position, but as you are pointing the game is not even on beta and people are making die hard statements.
I conpletely agree. Every game should have he ability to be solo or group played. Thats wha mak MMO games great. If you watched all the videos from E3 they showed that he group play is also very much there and they said that almost every class can heal or tank depending on how you build your character. I really wish people would do there research before making judgements on something we have seen little game play from. Really your gonna rash on EA just because they have games you don't like. Have you even played Mass Effect?
<a href="http://www.enjin.com/"; alt="swtor guild hosting"><img src="http://sigs.enjin.com/sig-swtor/078143aeee5205ec.png"></a>;
*shrug* Believe what you want to believe.
I might as well call you a SW TOR 'hater' with as much out-of-the-air 'evidence' as you apparently throw around with statements like your post
. But I won't.
If you desire to make it personal: I've already stated often that I'm not that huge a fan of the Star Wars universe - a Mass Effect or Blade Runner universe I'd consider more interesting. Also - as I've made no secret of - I find GW2 and TSW the more interesting upcoming MMO's. I'd rate SW ToR on my interest level with a Vindictus and Rift, slightly higher than a FFXIV and TERA. I also mention enough my conviction to reserve any judgement - whether good or bad - until a beta arrives, until then much of the upcoming game is unsure.
Why I did post this OP was because of the ignorance and the almost fanatical holding on to of some people that SW TOR is (or they'd want it to be?) a singleplayer game dismissing any reports or statements from Bioware that it will be as much a MMO game as the other MMO's.
A fanboi is in my eyes someone who refuses to acknowledge any criticism of their game, dismissing any negative aspects that others find or state about 'their' game, almost fervently stressing that their game has only positive aspects. I could name you WoW fanbois as an example that are freakishly fanatic in their 'beliefs'. Haters of course are exactly the opposite, only wanting to see and holding onto the negative aspects of a MMO game, refusing to admit any claims to the positive aspects of it.
But I don't feel much for ending up in these neverending debates with you again, about stuff and arguments that I consider too ludicrous or farfetched for words, I prefer the debates I have to be more balanced. At least, I'm in no mood for those philosophical discussions with you right now, so please refrain from derailing this topic into a personal attack by claiming to 'know' what and what not I believe in.
If you want to pursue your intense scrutiny and criticism of upcoming MMO games - which, let me stress this, is nothing wrong with and I even applaud this attitude when balanced with objectivity and common sense - then you should certainly continue that, I'm interested and looking forward to your scrutinies of other upcoming MMO games as GW2, TERA, Rift and FFXIV as well.
TL; DR
As I said, people should keep on believing what they want to believe.
If they feel they should distrust anything a game company does or suspect anything about an upcoming game, then they should do so. If they want to do that with weak, onesided and/or biased arguments, then they should do so as well but prepare to have others point them to the flaws of their argumentation.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Thanks for the post, some good feedback there.
I think you're missing the point of people's concerns however. I doubt anyone is stupid enough to think that SWTOR is not really an MMO or is a single-player game. What people - including myself - are concerned about is that we haven't seen or heard anything about the majority of the gameplay that makes up the life in a MMORPG.
In any MMORPG played for a long period of time (more than 1-2 months), the content is something like 5%-10% storyline and 90%-95% "mmo gameplay". The 90%+ is taken up with stuff to do AFTER you've finished the questline / storyline. This is comprised of different things in different games but includes stuff like exploration, dungeons / instances, hunting, building cities, etc. Basically living with your character in the world after you've done the pre-written stories.
This is not to say that pre-written stories are all done solo, but they have a set design for the number of players and really can only be experience once. This is experience in an MMO is extremely similar to the experience you get in single-player or multi-player game that's not an MMO. This is why some people refer to the rest of the experience (the 90%) as "the mmo gameplay", because the stuff that happens after is really what makes an MMO.
So unfortunately, what you've posted does nothing to alleviate my misgivings about this game. I'm still 100% sure i'm buying it and playing through the pre-written storyline. I still haven't seen anything that makes me think there is a reason to stick around after the 2-3 weeks it'll take to finish that. Oh and i have no doubt at all that it's an MMO and has plenty of group-friendly gameplay. I just haven't seen what's there to do in the world after the storyline.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
No it can not go both ways. Because we are talking here about a game that is not even playable.
So I see and look at the E3 hyping and PR stuff and I see and look where the game concepts come from. WHY there are active NPC's in a 2007 designed concept, WHY there are party NPC members with voice overs in a typical Bioware game.
The off fanboy is the one defending a game that is not even playable. "Look nah nah nah we have ALL this !".
The guy posting BIG question marks above what is being shown is the critical one. He can't hate a game he questions.
That's the difference between existing games that can be played anytime and the FEELING to need to hype and play along with the makers of a new game that didn't even show actual gameplay up front.
I discuss design decisions (NPC's, talkies, prerendered cinematics, fixed liniair story telling instead of story SETTING) and its possible catastrophic results for a Multi Mass Online Game to be played endlessly.
People defending games should defend with arguments - like I do - instead of flling a complete page of story telling about a non playable game.
Its embarrassing when an NPC compliments you in an MMo, the only relevant, cool and epic things come from players whispering you Grtz, mate, we did it. copyright Pilnkplonk
An M4O and not MMO?
Wumi - SWG - Bloodfin - Cancelled
Wumi - WoW - Eu-Kazzak - Cancelled
Bulldozer - Aion - Eu-Kahrun - Cancelled
Wumi - Rift - EU-Riptalon - Cancelled
Yes, it can. Even more, he just did.
That you don't agree with his view is another matter, but he is entitled as much to his point of view as you are to yours. That's the way it works. You might think that your viewpoint is the "right" one and all others false (especially those not agreeing with you), but that doesn't make it so. The same applies to what you think is a 'fanboi' and a 'hater', it doesn't make it automatically the universal definition, it's still only in your thoughts.
Back to topic:
In blue
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Hundreds of people on screen at once? I can't think of a single MMO that's ever been released that has that.
Full group content has been shown.
It's not an MMO unless it has large PvP battles? That seems like a silly standard, but ToR meets it with their BG-like stuff, and they've said they have other sorts of PvP as well.
Anyhow, I think large group size stuff is over-emphasized by a lot of people. There are many people who HATE raiding. I am one of them. A lot of work and you get a lot of headaches out of it. I much prefer small group settings, which is PERFECTLY consistent with a game being an MMO since the available number of players to make up that group is massive.
That said, ToR will have large group stuff, they've already said that.
Hi there, caveman.
Not going to name a game that has 200+ people on screen at once?
The game play sounded pretty cool. But can't you hire henchmen? If so, then common sense tells you that the moment anyone disagrees with anyone else, or doesn't want to do something exactly they way they want to do it, they'll just ditch the group, and go hire a henchmen.
Isn't that the case with all the current top MMO's and also the upcoming ones?
They all have the option to solo to end level if people like, but also offer group content.
If you want to talk about enforcing grouping for people to do so, then it's more games like Everquest where that design choice was made: it was very, very hard to gain experience solo playing the closer you came to the highest levels.
The current MMO's and the upcoming MMO's are all about offering the opportunity to play the game solo as well as in groups.
Enforcing people to group is not a popular design choice anymore, but the next best thing is encouraging people to group and make it fun and attractive: devs of both GW2 and SW TOR have claimed of implementing features that stimulates it, both in their own ways.
I guess we'll see in demos and betas and such in the upcoming months how the designers intend to accomplish it.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I don't see a problem even if it was solo-centric. It still follows all the rules to be an MMO, I could care less about group play in this game. Deep down inside I wanted a single player MMO. I love grouping methods used in other MMOs but with this game, developer and IP, it just feels like it should be solo/small group oriented.
I'm with you here. I don't mind grouping but I rather it be fun and attractive than forced. When it's forced it doesn't create good communities - which is one of my personal reasons for playing an MMO. Grouping should be an option for friends to get together instead of pairing players up to use each other as tools to get what they want.
True, you see it in GW - not that there wasn't enough fun grouping to be done, henchmen were smart but overall a group of players would/could be better.
As far as has been told and shown, a full team of 4 can only consist of 4 players: they can optionally bring their enhanced pets, the so called Companions along with them, but these cannot fill up a team spot like the Heroes can in GW.
The Companions can help out in flexibility within the group though, if you miss a healer then bring 4 healing Companions, if you miss dps or cc power bring dps or cc Companions etc.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."