Well, KOTRO, ME, DA. When did Bioware ever NOT make a large gathering of quest tunnels? One has reason to be skeptical.
That has to be the worst example I have heard. You are comparing 2 completely different things. KOTOR, ME, DA, DAO....these are single player games. This is BioWare's first MMORPG, if it sucks or not doesn't make your example any more relevant.
Originally posted by hayes303 Originally posted by Elikal Well, KOTRO, ME, DA. When did Bioware ever NOT make a large gathering of quest tunnels? One has reason to be skeptical.
That has to be the worst example I have heard. You are comparing 2 completely different things. KOTOR, ME, DA, DAO....these are single player games. This is BioWare's first MMORPG, if it sucks or not doesn't make your example any more relevant.
MMO....RPG.
It's funny how the mouthbreathers always forget the RPG.
It not being SWG is the best part about the game so far. SWG produced the worst case of whiners ever. Not to mention it was not Star Wars in feel and it was boring . This is of course my opinion.
Well, KOTRO, ME, DA. When did Bioware ever NOT make a large gathering of quest tunnels? One has reason to be skeptical.
That has to be the worst example I have heard. You are comparing 2 completely different things. KOTOR, ME, DA, DAO....these are single player games. This is BioWare's first MMORPG, if it sucks or not doesn't make your example any more relevant.
Well, one can only extrapolate what will be on the facts of what was. Anything else wouldn't be logical now, wouldn't it? Anything else is sure a charming way to give people a new chance. But it is also bordering naivety.
When I invite you to dinner 6 times, and 6 times in a row I burn the meat, would you not have reason to be skeptical, when I invite you to a VAST big meal in the 7th time?
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
My Quote replies are not working so here is a quote from the OP
[quote]"One of the main thing I have always enjoyed in mmo's is the ability to explore new areas. I don't play SWG anymore but the map size of their planets were great to explore. So far, by looking at a couple of the world maps of SWTOR, the planet maps are only about the size of a city area, like CoX, with no wilderness to explore. I kind of expected it from Bioware since all their KOTOR games have restricted maps like that. But I had hoped since they claimed to be trying to make an mmo here that they would mmo-style maps, not console maps. I understand it's still beta, no need to state the obvious, and for that same reason is why this should be brought up now in hopes the devs might actually listen unlike SOE did in the end."[/quote]
And what did you explore? Vast and endless maps of the same re generated trees and empty landscapes. Gimme a freakin break man!!! Bigger does not always mean better. I think swg sacraficed quality for quantity when it came to certain things.
I would rather have a more controlled smaller wow like, aion like, maps with tons of content probably 100 times that of swg. As oppose to a huge crap fest empty non content landscape generator map with nothing to do and tons of abandoned remains of cities.
Well, KOTRO, ME, DA. When did Bioware ever NOT make a large gathering of quest tunnels? One has reason to be skeptical.
That has to be the worst example I have heard. You are comparing 2 completely different things. KOTOR, ME, DA, DAO....these are single player games. This is BioWare's first MMORPG, if it sucks or not doesn't make your example any more relevant.
Well, one can only extrapolate what will be on the facts of what was. Anything else wouldn't be logical now, wouldn't it? Anything else is sure a charming way to give people a new chance. But it is also bordering naivety.
Again, just because Coke makes soft drinks and shirts doesn't mean I can drink the shirt. I'm not saying that the game will be the end all be all of gaming or even not the aforementioned quest tunnel, but your interpretation of data that may or may not be relevant as the only logical conclusion could be classified as naive. It has nothing to do with new chances, as we have yet to give BioWare a chance at making MMORPGS (and reading these forums, it doesn't seem like many are ever going to be at the point where they will give BioWare a chance).
If you invite me to dinner and burn the meat 6 times, I would suggest we order pizza for the 7th.
Re-read the forum rules please and try not flaming while trying to add something constructive next time, thanks.
You're telling someone to read the forums rules in the middle of your triple post....
and to the post you made right before that one, I bashed those keys for a reason. Not one single thing you brought up in your original topic was "new" or something we haven't seen talked about a billion(hence my facerolling) times already. People are desperately looking for ways to gripe about this game, and threads like these are a cesspool for said individuals.
1) It isn't SWG. It was never trying to be SWG. It will NEVER be SWG.
Yep, and that's my main problem with this game.
So true.
I just hope SWG Vets have an option to tag themselves. So that I can immediately ignore them and move on and enjoy the game.
I was actually hoping for preferred servers for them, cause I sure dont wanna be forced to endure hearing about that abortion of a game ala these forums.
For the folks that played SWG pre-whatever, and stuck with it, the game was the best thing since sliced bread.
Most of us not playing it felt SWG was a smoldering piece of chit. Funny how they demand a game like the one no one else wanted to play but themselves. Would make a lot of sense for BW/EA to dump all this money into a game for them /sarcasm off
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
One has to remember that the bulk of Bioware's audience play single player games. Bioware has to please both audiences, so don't be super surprised if you find that SWTOR is more like a multiplayer RPG and less like a true MMO. I also don't think it being instanced will kill it. Just because it's not Eve doesn't mean it's fail. Still, the devs said that the majority of the game said it was not instanced.
And if it is heavily instanced, the argument "A heavily instance MMO does not deserve a monthly subscription" is a poor one. The subscription may pay for a persistent world, but the majority of the money goes to creating frequent updates to keep the players entertained.
Whatever happens, I believe SWTOR will be successful. However, Bioware alone can choose what group they want to target. They can target the now small sandbox gamers by making it 100% persistent, or target the millions who beat Mass Effect 2 and thought "that was the best single player experience I have ever... uhhh... experienced." Or, they can just compromise. If they choose against your particular play style, then SWTOR just isn't your game. Saying it will fail because they're not making it exactly how you want it is just stupid. It wont change anything, SWTOR will not fail. Do you know why? Because when you combine all the dumb Star Wars fans, all the sheep-like Bioware fans, a good chunk of us grumpy MMO gamers, and everywhere in between, you're going to get a successful game.
I was hoping for a more open world feel with larger areas in this title as well. However, this would not stop me from playing as long as I hear good things from other players. This isn't a title I plan to jump into at launch so I can just wait and see how things turn out. I am hoping for the best though.
Man, I wish the mods would just delete threads started where the OP clearly has no idea what he is talking about. All accounts of people who tried the game at E3 are that the worlds are quite large.
Your post is based on opinion, just like mine is. Welcome to the real world.
Wish this ex swg pre cu , or NGE players would just S...T...F...UP!!!!
God, your game was garbage then , it's garbage now. Even every sandbox mmo you try to talk people into playing is a fucking snore fest.
Name one sandbox style mmo that isn't /yawn
eve= BOOOORRRRRIINNGGGG
SWG= garbage!!
Earth Fallen...... terrible game, and once again boring as hell.
Nobody wants your crappy sandbox style go take that back to the late 90's when MMO's had no purpose or direction.
I'm not sure how many times posters like you have to be told that big map does not equal sandbox so stop generalizing and trying to read things out of my post that aren't there.
One of the main thing I have always enjoyed in mmo's is the ability to explore new areas. I don't play SWG anymore but the map size of their planets were great to explore. So far, by looking at a couple of the world maps of SWTOR, the planet maps are only about the size of a city area, like CoX, with no wilderness to explore. I kind of expected it from Bioware since all their KOTOR games have restricted maps like that. But I had hoped since they claimed to be trying to make an mmo here that they would mmo-style maps, not console maps. I understand it's still beta, no need to state the obvious, and for that same reason is why this should be brought up now in hopes the devs might actually listen unlike SOE did in the end.
Reports on FDarth HAter have testers who have run 5 mins in one direction over a crafted map...... So the worlds arre not small. Some of the Beta areas may be.
My Quote replies are not working so here is a quote from the OP
[quote]"One of the main thing I have always enjoyed in mmo's is the ability to explore new areas. I don't play SWG anymore but the map size of their planets were great to explore. So far, by looking at a couple of the world maps of SWTOR, the planet maps are only about the size of a city area, like CoX, with no wilderness to explore. I kind of expected it from Bioware since all their KOTOR games have restricted maps like that. But I had hoped since they claimed to be trying to make an mmo here that they would mmo-style maps, not console maps. I understand it's still beta, no need to state the obvious, and for that same reason is why this should be brought up now in hopes the devs might actually listen unlike SOE did in the end."[/quote]
And what did you explore? Vast and endless maps of the same re generated trees and empty landscapes. Gimme a freakin break man!!! Bigger does not always mean better. I think swg sacraficed quality for quantity when it came to certain things.
I would rather have a more controlled smaller wow like, aion like, maps with tons of content probably 100 times that of swg. As oppose to a huge crap fest empty non content landscape generator map with nothing to do and tons of abandoned remains of cities.
I only used SWG for an example since it is a SW universe like SWTOR. There are countless other games that have large maps for being able to just go out on the edge and hunt mobs without dealing with a lot of traffic. EVE, DAoC, AC, AC2, EQ, EQ2, LoTRO, L2, just to name a few. I really wish posters would stop posting just to flame when they aren't even reading the post for what it is and not trying to twist my words just to hear themselves talk.
Star Wars movies/novels were always about expansive, huge settings and crowding everyone into one map where anyone can visually see another player within eyesight is weak at best.
After reading thios thread I miss SWG even more now, and cannot wait for SWKOTOR even more! Not so much for the mechanics but for the SW theme. I am so sick of bouncing between Dwarfs in EQ2 and Heroes I'm sick of it.
One of the main thing I have always enjoyed in mmo's is the ability to explore new areas. I don't play SWG anymore but the map size of their planets were great to explore. So far, by looking at a couple of the world maps of SWTOR, the planet maps are only about the size of a city area, like CoX, with no wilderness to explore. I kind of expected it from Bioware since all their KOTOR games have restricted maps like that. But I had hoped since they claimed to be trying to make an mmo here that they would mmo-style maps, not console maps. I understand it's still beta, no need to state the obvious, and for that same reason is why this should be brought up now in hopes the devs might actually listen unlike SOE did in the end.
Reports on FDarth HAter have testers who have run 5 mins in one direction over a crafted map...... So the worlds arre not small. Some of the Beta areas may be.
5mins is not a long time to cross a map...
But a small hour is, as another playtester reported when he played SW:ToR.
I'll post his impressions in full:
" -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."
Seems to me alright when it comes to the seamlessness of the instances with the real world and the world size of even the Origin Planets, let alone the much more enormous other planets.
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."
So it's early in the morning/late at night, and this is a bit scatter brained, but hopefully this is clear. :P
P.S. I'm using WoW as an example because it's easiest and most people can picture it better.
One thing is for sure, that people really need to understand that when they say "planet".... obviously Bioware cannot create an ENTIRE planet (i.e. the world of Azeroth) for each of the 13 planets, and that seems to be what people (read haters) expect. But from my understanding, each "planet", while huge in their own right, will be the equivalent of a zone from WoW. But that being said, these zones are apparently much bigger than said WoW zones. What this seems to translate to me as is whenever you leave whatever planet you're on, it's like leaving The Barrens and going to Ashenvale, only each of those being 10 times larger and having smaller areas/mulitple cities etc. within each one.
So far there's been 13 planets announced. To put that in perspective of what these articles mean to me, there are 20 (?) zones in Kalimdor, but some of the larger zones take... what 10 minutes to run through.... that being the barrens. If the smallest of the "Zones" (read Planets) in SWTOR are the starter planets, which takes this guy roughly 45 minutes to run through the area, doing little side missions or whatnot.. and the mobs don't get any higher than level 7 or 8, then imagine the size of the larger planets like Coruscant or something. So this is genuinely a very big starting area in comparison to any zone in WoW, let alone a starter area. The game will probably roughly be the size of WoW, although keep in mind WoW has been out for 6 years and 2 (soon to be 3) expansions to make the world larger than when it first started.
All of this clears up the ONE fear I had about the game: That being the world, and it being heavily instanced and not open for exploration, and that's definitely not the case. I was afraid of it being one path minded like Aion or Warhammer. I'm glad it's more of a WoW experience as far as moving through the worlds (except the loading screens). Both of this guy's hands on previews say there wasn't ANY loading screens, the areas were very big and didn't feel confined, and the "instanced" areas (i.e. dungeons) were accessible without a loading screen.
I'm sure most of you have already read these, but this cleared up the world issue and how it's going to be presented for me.
One thing is for sure, that people really need to understand that when they say "planet".... obviously Bioware cannot create an ENTIRE planet (i.e. the world of Azeroth) for each of the 13 planets, and that seems to be what people (read haters) expect. But from my understanding, each "planet", while huge in their own right, will be the equivalent of a zone from WoW. Not exactly. It's more like a continent in how it works than a zone. But I'll comment upon that later on in this post. But that being said, these zones are apparently much bigger than said WoW zones. What this seems to translate to me as is whenever you leave whatever planet you're on, it's like leaving The Barrens and going to Ashenvale, only each of those being 10 times larger and having smaller areas/mulitple cities etc. within each one.
So far there's been 13 planets announced. To put that in perspective of what these articles mean to me, there are 20 (?) zones in Kalimdor, but some of the larger zones take... what 10 minutes to run through.... that being the barrens. If the smallest of the "Zones" (read Planets) in SWTOR are the starter planets, which takes this guy roughly 45 minutes to run through the area, doing little side missions or whatnot.. and the mobs don't get any higher than level 7 or 8, then imagine the size of the larger planets like Coruscant or something. So this is genuinely a very big starting area in comparison to any zone in WoW, let alone a starter area. The game will probably roughly be the size of WoW, although keep in mind WoW has been out for 6 years and 2 (soon to be 3) expansions to make the world larger than when it first started. There are several descriptions of the sizes of areas in SW:ToR, you have this guy that needed a small hour to cross an Origin Planet from one end to the other in a straight line; comparisons are, you need half an hour to a small hour to travel in Everquest from Felwithe to the other end, Qeynos boattrip excluded, and about 45 minutes in LotrO to travel from the Shire to Rivendell. Another source mentioned that each planet could be compared with 1 continent in WoW when it comes to size. Also the dev Eirckson stated that the Origin Planets are ridiculously small and the other Planets way, way larger than the Origin Planets. He also said that all worlds were handcrafted not procedurally generated so I have a good idea where a considerable part of their project budget went to.
All these statements together lead me to believe that SW:ToR in total worldsize will be more alike MMO's with massive worlds like a Vanguard, that it'll be at least as large as a LotrO as it is now and very likely much larger, and that SW:TOR will be multiple times the size of a WoW including the expansions.
Of course, we'll only know for sure if more info is released from the betas.
All of this clears up the ONE fear I had about the game: That being the world, and it being heavily instanced and not open for exploration, and that's definitely not the case. I was afraid of it being one path minded like Aion or Warhammer. I'm glad it's more of a WoW experience as far as moving through the worlds (except the loading screens). Both of this guy's hands on previews say there wasn't ANY loading screens, the areas were very big and didn't feel confined, and the "instanced" areas (i.e. dungeons) were accessible without a loading screen. True, even the instanced quest areas had no loading screen, making it all feel like contiguous world.
I'm sure most of you have already read these, but this cleared up the world issue and how it's going to be presented for me.
I wish people would stop thinking that SW;TOR will be instanced or the planetsizes small, there's enough material available that confirm it's the contrary. The total world size will be huge, and feel like one consistent environment.
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."
Since the begining of beta I think a lot of fears of the people has been answer. The game brings new stuffs, it's not a WoW clone, it's well done, it's huge and the combat it's fun!
I am happy I didn't lost my hope and now I am super hype and I pray every second for BioWare to send me this close beta email!
Can anyone provide an actual screen capture or a something that shows the size(maybe an in game map) of a play area? If not then why are we evn discussing this? We need more info...without we're all assuming. So please...provide a map.
Comments
I just hope SWG Vets have an option to tag themselves. So that I can immediately ignore them and move on and enjoy the game.
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Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
Wish this ex swg pre cu , or NGE players would just S...T...F...UP!!!!
God, your game was garbage then , it's garbage now. Even every sandbox mmo you try to talk people into playing is a fucking snore fest.
Name one sandbox style mmo that isn't /yawn
eve= BOOOORRRRRIINNGGGG
SWG= garbage!!
Earth Fallen...... terrible game, and once again boring as hell.
Nobody wants your crappy sandbox style go take that back to the late 90's when MMO's had no purpose or direction.
That has to be the worst example I have heard. You are comparing 2 completely different things. KOTOR, ME, DA, DAO....these are single player games. This is BioWare's first MMORPG, if it sucks or not doesn't make your example any more relevant.
WTF are you babbling about!
If you want to play SWG...GO PLAY SWG!
MMO....RPG.
It's funny how the mouthbreathers always forget the RPG.
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It not being SWG is the best part about the game so far. SWG produced the worst case of whiners ever. Not to mention it was not Star Wars in feel and it was boring . This is of course my opinion.
Well, one can only extrapolate what will be on the facts of what was. Anything else wouldn't be logical now, wouldn't it? Anything else is sure a charming way to give people a new chance. But it is also bordering naivety.
When I invite you to dinner 6 times, and 6 times in a row I burn the meat, would you not have reason to be skeptical, when I invite you to a VAST big meal in the 7th time?
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
My Quote replies are not working so here is a quote from the OP
[quote]"One of the main thing I have always enjoyed in mmo's is the ability to explore new areas. I don't play SWG anymore but the map size of their planets were great to explore. So far, by looking at a couple of the world maps of SWTOR, the planet maps are only about the size of a city area, like CoX, with no wilderness to explore. I kind of expected it from Bioware since all their KOTOR games have restricted maps like that. But I had hoped since they claimed to be trying to make an mmo here that they would mmo-style maps, not console maps. I understand it's still beta, no need to state the obvious, and for that same reason is why this should be brought up now in hopes the devs might actually listen unlike SOE did in the end."[/quote]
And what did you explore? Vast and endless maps of the same re generated trees and empty landscapes. Gimme a freakin break man!!! Bigger does not always mean better. I think swg sacraficed quality for quantity when it came to certain things.
I would rather have a more controlled smaller wow like, aion like, maps with tons of content probably 100 times that of swg. As oppose to a huge crap fest empty non content landscape generator map with nothing to do and tons of abandoned remains of cities.
Again, just because Coke makes soft drinks and shirts doesn't mean I can drink the shirt. I'm not saying that the game will be the end all be all of gaming or even not the aforementioned quest tunnel, but your interpretation of data that may or may not be relevant as the only logical conclusion could be classified as naive. It has nothing to do with new chances, as we have yet to give BioWare a chance at making MMORPGS (and reading these forums, it doesn't seem like many are ever going to be at the point where they will give BioWare a chance).
If you invite me to dinner and burn the meat 6 times, I would suggest we order pizza for the 7th.
You're telling someone to read the forums rules in the middle of your triple post....
and to the post you made right before that one, I bashed those keys for a reason. Not one single thing you brought up in your original topic was "new" or something we haven't seen talked about a billion(hence my facerolling) times already. People are desperately looking for ways to gripe about this game, and threads like these are a cesspool for said individuals.
LOL, man someone forgot to take their medical marijuana today.
I was actually hoping for preferred servers for them, cause I sure dont wanna be forced to endure hearing about that abortion of a game ala these forums.
For the folks that played SWG pre-whatever, and stuck with it, the game was the best thing since sliced bread.
Most of us not playing it felt SWG was a smoldering piece of chit. Funny how they demand a game like the one no one else wanted to play but themselves. Would make a lot of sense for BW/EA to dump all this money into a game for them /sarcasm off
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
One has to remember that the bulk of Bioware's audience play single player games. Bioware has to please both audiences, so don't be super surprised if you find that SWTOR is more like a multiplayer RPG and less like a true MMO. I also don't think it being instanced will kill it. Just because it's not Eve doesn't mean it's fail. Still, the devs said that the majority of the game said it was not instanced.
And if it is heavily instanced, the argument "A heavily instance MMO does not deserve a monthly subscription" is a poor one. The subscription may pay for a persistent world, but the majority of the money goes to creating frequent updates to keep the players entertained.
Whatever happens, I believe SWTOR will be successful. However, Bioware alone can choose what group they want to target. They can target the now small sandbox gamers by making it 100% persistent, or target the millions who beat Mass Effect 2 and thought "that was the best single player experience I have ever... uhhh... experienced." Or, they can just compromise. If they choose against your particular play style, then SWTOR just isn't your game. Saying it will fail because they're not making it exactly how you want it is just stupid. It wont change anything, SWTOR will not fail. Do you know why? Because when you combine all the dumb Star Wars fans, all the sheep-like Bioware fans, a good chunk of us grumpy MMO gamers, and everywhere in between, you're going to get a successful game.
This statement is false.
I was hoping for a more open world feel with larger areas in this title as well. However, this would not stop me from playing as long as I hear good things from other players. This isn't a title I plan to jump into at launch so I can just wait and see how things turn out. I am hoping for the best though.
Steam: Neph
Your post is based on opinion, just like mine is. Welcome to the real world.
I'm not sure how many times posters like you have to be told that big map does not equal sandbox so stop generalizing and trying to read things out of my post that aren't there.
5mins is not a long time to cross a map...
I only used SWG for an example since it is a SW universe like SWTOR. There are countless other games that have large maps for being able to just go out on the edge and hunt mobs without dealing with a lot of traffic. EVE, DAoC, AC, AC2, EQ, EQ2, LoTRO, L2, just to name a few. I really wish posters would stop posting just to flame when they aren't even reading the post for what it is and not trying to twist my words just to hear themselves talk.
Star Wars movies/novels were always about expansive, huge settings and crowding everyone into one map where anyone can visually see another player within eyesight is weak at best.
After reading thios thread I miss SWG even more now, and cannot wait for SWKOTOR even more! Not so much for the mechanics but for the SW theme. I am so sick of bouncing between Dwarfs in EQ2 and Heroes I'm sick of it.
But a small hour is, as another playtester reported when he played SW:ToR.
I'll post his impressions in full:
" -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."
Seems to me alright when it comes to the seamlessness of the instances with the real world and the world size of even the Origin Planets, let alone the much more enormous other planets.
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."
So it's early in the morning/late at night, and this is a bit scatter brained, but hopefully this is clear. :P
P.S. I'm using WoW as an example because it's easiest and most people can picture it better.
One thing is for sure, that people really need to understand that when they say "planet".... obviously Bioware cannot create an ENTIRE planet (i.e. the world of Azeroth) for each of the 13 planets, and that seems to be what people (read haters) expect. But from my understanding, each "planet", while huge in their own right, will be the equivalent of a zone from WoW. But that being said, these zones are apparently much bigger than said WoW zones. What this seems to translate to me as is whenever you leave whatever planet you're on, it's like leaving The Barrens and going to Ashenvale, only each of those being 10 times larger and having smaller areas/mulitple cities etc. within each one.
So far there's been 13 planets announced. To put that in perspective of what these articles mean to me, there are 20 (?) zones in Kalimdor, but some of the larger zones take... what 10 minutes to run through.... that being the barrens. If the smallest of the "Zones" (read Planets) in SWTOR are the starter planets, which takes this guy roughly 45 minutes to run through the area, doing little side missions or whatnot.. and the mobs don't get any higher than level 7 or 8, then imagine the size of the larger planets like Coruscant or something. So this is genuinely a very big starting area in comparison to any zone in WoW, let alone a starter area. The game will probably roughly be the size of WoW, although keep in mind WoW has been out for 6 years and 2 (soon to be 3) expansions to make the world larger than when it first started.
All of this clears up the ONE fear I had about the game: That being the world, and it being heavily instanced and not open for exploration, and that's definitely not the case. I was afraid of it being one path minded like Aion or Warhammer. I'm glad it's more of a WoW experience as far as moving through the worlds (except the loading screens). Both of this guy's hands on previews say there wasn't ANY loading screens, the areas were very big and didn't feel confined, and the "instanced" areas (i.e. dungeons) were accessible without a loading screen.
I'm sure most of you have already read these, but this cleared up the world issue and how it's going to be presented for me.
http://www.torocast.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=236:repost-brandons-hands-on-impressions-of-swtor&Itemid=99
http://www.torocast.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=239:repost-brandon%E2%80%99s-hands-on-impressions-round-2-speeders&Itemid=99
I wish people would stop thinking that SW;TOR will be instanced or the planetsizes small, there's enough material available that confirm it's the contrary. The total world size will be huge, and feel like one consistent environment.
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."
Since the begining of beta I think a lot of fears of the people has been answer. The game brings new stuffs, it's not a WoW clone, it's well done, it's huge and the combat it's fun!
I am happy I didn't lost my hope and now I am super hype and I pray every second for BioWare to send me this close beta email!
<a href="http://www.enjin.com/"; alt="swtor guild hosting"><img src="http://sigs.enjin.com/sig-swtor/23d3ae4fb19b441f.png"></a>;
And you based that assessement on?
WOW endgame is instance based ... WOW failed in a year?
GW is instance based ... GW failed in a year?
Get real.
Can anyone provide an actual screen capture or a something that shows the size(maybe an in game map) of a play area? If not then why are we evn discussing this? We need more info...without we're all assuming. So please...provide a map.