#5 ) Personal Story for Your Character - Nope and no thanks, most people don't even care about the stories in MMOs, I doubt they will bring this back to life, as its far been lost over the years, and most of the people involved in MMOs prefer the social aspects rather than the story aspects.
#4) Voice Acting - The voice acting will be cool for a day, then skipped by a good % of the player base, because they'll want to play not watch a ugly interactive cartoon.
#3) Companion Characters - People in current day MMOs are OBSESSED with pets, so this is prob gonna be a epic win on their part, or possibly a fail because its a person rather than a pet, who knows.. I don't get it, not personally a fan, but this fits well with the single player aspect the game is pushing forward.
#2)Player ships as housing - Its a alright concept, though I'm pretty sure people would have much rather had a community of housing rather than a ship all by their lonesome, again, current day MMOs (WOW) is about the social aspect of being around people.. and frankly segregating people to their own private location tends to make places a deserted waste land (DAoC is a good example .. when housing went in, the capital cities were empty.. WoW has no housing, capital cities are jam packed)
#1) It's Star Wars and Its Bioware - No its STAR WARS, frankly who the hell cares if its BioWare.. woooo single player game company is making an MMO!!!! SWEET BRO! If it was BioWare making hmm lets see "Bruce Lee World Online" or something that wasn't Star Wars , no one would give a flying shit if it was made by BioWare, the sole reason this is gigantic is ONLY because it is Star Wars. I'd be willing to be MOST people interested in this game, have never played a BioWare game before, and never heard of the company prior to this game.
Anyhow, Wold of Star Wars looks like it'll be a decent casual game for me if TERA fails, or something like Earth Rise never comes out (or sucks).
Wow you make no sense. Just because people don't care about story in other mmos doesn't mean they won't in TOR. Reason they don't care in other games is because the quest story themselves are not important. Things would be different if your choices in a quest influenced your rep in any form.
Oh and even in WoW people care about the story, such as when the lich king died or first look at changes in lore. Difference is that quests themselves are so pointless 99% of the time that no one cares about them. Whether TOR will change this is another question but the first to actually attempt it.
Eh , the only ones that don't care for the story are the grinders. The reason we have grinds to begin with is the trend was "Fly threw the game fast" (because we enjoyed the MMO's of the older days) and ran out of content. Developers had to come up with ways to keep you the player based entertained, AKA the grind. The original MMO's like UO, EQ and even prior to graphic interface where all about story. RPG doesn't mean Repeat Rigorous Grinding, it means Role Playing Game, in which a story and plot you are part of. Hate to blow the load here, but it's not a huge secret, people are sick of the grind, sick of the trend that MMO's are taking. Bioware is bring back what MMO RPG's are all about, the story and friends. Game play, extras are just that, to enhance the game that we intend to enjoy the story on with friends.
It's actually that simple, grinding became the norm because it is the easiest and cheapest way for development teams to bring content out that will take you forever to get threw. WoW, as horrible as I hate to bring up that game , might have some grinding aspects, but what it does well is allow you to or not too grind. Any other MMO I can think of today, such as my fav at, lotro has a ton of grinding things, thou they have slowly but surly taken out the grind, it was for all intent at the time, meant to keep the player base busy while they could make content. Well at least that's what they said, you can see quality over quantity any day and at least they learned in that game, people will only take so much repeated crap before they leave. If anyone will pull this off right, it will be bioware. Am I a fan-boy? You bet, bioware has yet to let me down. Doesn't mean they won't here, but overall, just like blizzard(even they are a new team) still do well by keeping the principles that made them great in the first place.
"The monster created isn't by the company that makes the game, it's by the fans that make it something it never was"
I'm just afraid it's gonna be overhyped and filled to the eyeballs with cinematics. It's one of the few good Pay 2 Play games about to be released before the F2P game model destroys what's left of the MMORPG game style.
"Never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game."-Guybrush Threepwood "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."-Hunter S. Thompson
Odd but the one thing that makes me wary of this game is none of the 5 listed.
It is EA's involvement EA has canned more MMO's than all of the companies combined and they are notorious for doing it, I have almost no interest in this game because it just isn't a genre I like and I just don't like the look of it but I do believe that Bioware can produce a good game however as someone that played UO from the beginning I have a suspicion we will see Bioware go the way of Origin.
It's all about content folks. Blizzard were a hugely successful company with lots of fans and tons of money before making WoW. BioWare is a hugely successful company with lots of fans and tons of money ... Hello?
I'd agree that the current hype isn't just from the fact that it's Star Wars. Star Wars has lost much of its lustre since the prequel debacle. The current hype probably has more to do with the fact that it's BioWare, and that they've already successfully made a classic Star Wars CRPG (by which I mean, it fit right into the Star Wars lore, respectfully and properly - so there shouldn't be any problem with the hardcore SW fans).
A few players skip dialogue/text as reflex, but most only skip dialogue/text if it's crap. So long as the teaming side of things isn't neglected (as it was, for example, sadly, in the recent Champions Online), a strong single player experience can only benefit an MMO.
Granted the people involved aren't idiots at ideas or management, then it really is all about money and content. You need tons of money to hire the people to make the content, and you need tons of money to market the game successfully. That's why Sony were successful in the past, that's why Blizzard were successful. That's why so many other companies haven't been successful (even if they've had some great ideas, etc.). If SW:TOR is successful, it will have been for the same reason.
#1) It's Star Wars and Its Bioware - No its STAR WARS, frankly who the hell cares if its BioWare.. woooo single player game company is making an MMO!!!! SWEET BRO! If it was BioWare making hmm lets see "Bruce Lee World Online" or something that wasn't Star Wars , no one would give a flying shit if it was made by BioWare, the sole reason this is gigantic is ONLY because it is Star Wars. I'd be willing to be MOST people interested in this game, have never played a BioWare game before, and never heard of the company prior to this game.
Dude are you out of your mind? Bioware is one of the best selling video game companies. If they made Hello Kitty online i would be willing to play it. To be honest, KOTOR made Star Wars for me. Without KOTOR I would have gone on hating Star Wars. Kotor to this day is still my favorite game ever made.
I have bought every game Bioware has made since MDK2 (I was not a big RPG gamer when Baldurs gate came out) and have never been disappointed. THATS why I am excited...because Bioware has pedigree...they know how to make great freaking games, and they know how to make great stories too. Which is why I think the story mode will be a huge plus in this game. The reason most people don't give a crap about MMO stories is because MMO's have routinely glossed over it because they could...SW:TOR is doing every thing they can to make the game a game instead of this marathon as to who can be leveled the fastest.
Player housing in ships will be neat, 1 because other players can come roam around in your ship...see your accomplishments and hopefully there is some decorating ability...decorating my SWG house was a blast and I would love to see some implementation of that in TOR.
As an old MMO player, the 5 reasons tated do not inspire me a bit.
I did not play WoW because it was made by Blizzard, I played WoW for the first time because my then favorite game, SWG, received an update (NGE) which basically wanted to copy WoW.
This statement may seem out of topic here but it is not. It simply means that when you try to outdo someone else, do something different and new with its own merits, don't just try to copy them in an attempt to get a peace of the pie, at least in the MMO world thatis what the record shows.
That being said, while some of the features BioWare is trying to advance seem to be "cool" at first glance, these also have some very negative implications within the context of an MMO.
"BioWare is promising that their first crack at an MMORPG will do everything their offline offerings have come to do so competently, and that includes offering a continuing narrative throughout the game and for your characters."
Everything that I have seen about this game this far, Previews, Trailers, Dev Logs etc, is painting a very Single Player kind of Gameplay experience for an MMO.
Back in the day of MMO, a character's story evolved by the player and their experiences in the Virtual World the MMO was set in. What you chose to do in any given situation affects that personal story, each activity maybe a short Adventure, and once several adventures accumulate that makes a Chapter in your story.
I beleive that Bioware, may have actually understod that part, and that is why their offline offerings have such acclaim and are loved my all those that play them (including myself), but the mindset of a player is not the same when it comes to an MMO.
In an MMO players expect to be able to adventure in the world with other players, interact in various manners, the game being the stage upon which the player stories are being created take place and unfold as wellas being recorded over time. Because it is all about the story of one's choices in response to challenges comming from that interaction with other playes....not the AI or the environment directly.
In an offline game it is about the player and the environemnt, but in an online game it is about the player and other players in the environment.
There is a big difference in terms of the mindset of a player and the expectations this mindset formulates thereafter.
So having seen trailers and read various information about the game, and from within the MMO mindset point of view I was left with a feeling of emptyness in the end.
This "MMO" looks to me like KOTOR or Dragon Age with a Subscription, it feels like an Offline game that you have to pay 2-10x more for (assuming 1-5 years playing).
There does not seem to be any real Online experience in it except the Multiplayer Mode of partying with others and doing together some specific missions, or gathering all together in to Social Hubs such as the ones found in Diablo and Guild Wars.
Another implication here is that in the end, All players will end up having the same story more or less, and most probably only differ in a mechanical way, some will have more of this or less of that depending on the choices they made during the dialogs, yet overall everyone is experiencing the same story and flow, just like an Offline game. That is a big concern from an MMO mindset point of view.
We do not have to pay a sub just to gather in a social hug and share with other players the way we went about solving this or that challenge, we can do that in a forum or teamspeak and Vent (in many cases also over diner or a Camping outing) for free, just like we all share our experiences that we had with an Offline game.
What makes an MMO great is the fact that every player has a unique story to tell, not the fact that everyone has a Hero story to tell, let alone a story that is dictated by the game itself.
In an offline game the player through their actions discovers the story, it causes it to unfold, in an MMO the story is being written as the player plays, but that means also that the story has not been pre-written.
And SW:TOR's experience seems to be all about the player paying a sub to discover the pre-written story, just like an Offline game.
Will it work? Only time will tell, there maybe some nich part of the Playerbase that will really relate to this, but in the long term, this approach will is not appealing to the MMO player.
In my opinion.
- Duke Suraknar - Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
In an MMO players expect to be able to adventure in the world with other players, interact in various manners, the game being the stage upon which the player stories are being created take place and unfold as wellas being recorded over time. Because it is all about the story of one's choices in response to challenges comming from that interaction with other playes....not the AI or the environment directly.
In an offline game it is about the player and the environemnt, but in an online game it is about the player and other players in the environment.
There is a big difference in terms of the mindset of a player and the expectations this mindset formulates thereafter.
So having seen trailers and read various information about the game, and from within the MMO mindset point of view I was left with a feeling of emptyness in the end.
This "MMO" looks to me like KOTOR or Dragon Age with a Subscription, it feels like an Offline game that you have to pay 2-10x more for (assuming 1-5 years playing).
There does not seem to be any real Online experience in it except the Multiplayer Mode of partying with others and doing together some specific missions, or gathering all together in to Social Hubs such as the ones found in Diablo and Guild Wars.
Another implication here is that in the end, All players will end up having the same story more or less, and most probably only differ in a mechanical way, some will have more of this or less of that depending on the choices they made during the dialogs, yet overall everyone is experiencing the same story and flow, just like an Offline game. That is a big concern from an MMO mindset point of view.
We do not have to pay a sub just to gather in a social hug and share with other players the way we went about solving this or that challenge, we can do that in a forum or teamspeak and Vent (in many cases also over diner or a Camping outing) for free, just like we all share our experiences that we had with an Offline game.
What makes an MMO great is the fact that every player has a unique story to tell, not the fact that everyone has a Hero story to tell, let alone a story that is dictated by the game itself.
He touches here on the fundemental question of a MMORPG but doesn't go deep enough. What is a MMORPG about? Why do people play it?
Is it a RPG with lobby where you can show of your stats?
Is it a Roleplaying game where you can pretend to be someone else and life a fantasy?
Is it an adventure engine were you group up with friends and experience an adventure?
A LOT of MMORPG developers seem to take the approach that it is a slash-em-up with a very basic social element. Just compare your email program with the mail you get in any game. The chat channels in game with IRC. The social panel with Facebook. See? Clearly MMORPG companies don't consider the social aspect to be all that important. A clear example is Lord of the Rings Online where they keep insisting in breaking up groups by having solo quests that are meaningless drivel in the group content.
Wouldn't it be a LOT easier to get a group going if the solo and group content was clearly seperated so that once you did form a group, you could keep it going in one smooth run, instead of it constantly being interrupted by run around quests and forced solo content?
SWTOR seems to have taken the approach that since games have very pool tools and design in place to facilitate groups, lots of the content must be solo friendly. I predict you will get lots of people who are socially inept racing through the content looking for some mystical end-game were they will stop the race and have fun, but they never reach that point.
SWTOR will be Kotor 3, and Kotor 3 is bound to sell well. But it won't be the new Ultima Online or Everquest let alone Star Wars Galaxies. Not that these games were perfect as games, but they were perfect at forcing people to form a community. Those that couldn't be social soon dropped out, leaving the people that could work together.
And the sad fact is that the financial success of SWTOR will make other MMORPG developers make their game more and more solo only, forever forgetting that without the in game friends, people have no commitment to the game. Why do people still play Everquest and Ultima Online? Because of the people.
Think about the countless games that have failed since then, all solo friendly. People play, they see what thegame has to offer and when a more shiny thing comes along they flock to it because their is nothing keeping them in the game.
SWTOR will be to MMORPG what Doom was to Adventures. Every single company now produces FPS because that is what sells, and adventures don't because they are not 3D so how could they sell? Even Funcom with its sleeper hit "The longest journey" had to turn it into a beat-em-up because... because no game developer can resist the easy path.
Solo is the dark side. Easier, quicker, but ultimately drains the life right out of a game.
I've got 1 good reason why it's going to be a success.
1. It's got the same gameplay mechanics as WoW. Skilless tab targeting and non-action oriented combat, thus making it WoW with a different skin. WoW fanboys and Star Wars fanboys will flock to this one no doubt.
I personally will wait for the actual skill based combat system that TERA Online will offer when it is released. I am not a carebear player so playing on the PvEasy servers do not appeal to me nor does the full voice dialog thing.
If the combat system is skilless, as it does appear to be, then I will sit this one out.
As an old MMO player, the 5 reasons tated do not inspire me a bit.
I did not play WoW because it was made by Blizzard, I played WoW for the first time because my then favorite game, SWG, received an update (NGE) which basically wanted to copy WoW.
This statement may seem out of topic here but it is not. It simply means that when you try to outdo someone else, do something different and new with its own merits, don't just try to copy them in an attempt to get a peace of the pie, at least in the MMO world thatis what the record shows.
That being said, while some of the features BioWare is trying to advance seem to be "cool" at first glance, these also have some very negative implications within the context of an MMO.
"BioWare is promising that their first crack at an MMORPG will do everything their offline offerings have come to do so competently, and that includes offering a continuing narrative throughout the game and for your characters."
Everything that I have seen about this game this far, Previews, Trailers, Dev Logs etc, is painting a very Single Player kind of Gameplay experience for an MMO.
Back in the day of MMO, a character's story evolved by the player and their experiences in the Virtual World the MMO was set in. What you chose to do in any given situation affects that personal story, each activity maybe a short Adventure, and once several adventures accumulate that makes a Chapter in your story.
I beleive that Bioware, may have actually understod that part, and that is why their offline offerings have such acclaim and are loved my all those that play them (including myself), but the mindset of a player is not the same when it comes to an MMO.
In an MMO players expect to be able to adventure in the world with other players, interact in various manners, the game being the stage upon which the player stories are being created take place and unfold as wellas being recorded over time. Because it is all about the story of one's choices in response to challenges comming from that interaction with other playes....not the AI or the environment directly.
In an offline game it is about the player and the environemnt, but in an online game it is about the player and other players in the environment.
There is a big difference in terms of the mindset of a player and the expectations this mindset formulates thereafter.
So having seen trailers and read various information about the game, and from within the MMO mindset point of view I was left with a feeling of emptyness in the end.
This "MMO" looks to me like KOTOR or Dragon Age with a Subscription, it feels like an Offline game that you have to pay 2-10x more for (assuming 1-5 years playing).
There does not seem to be any real Online experience in it except the Multiplayer Mode of partying with others and doing together some specific missions, or gathering all together in to Social Hubs such as the ones found in Diablo and Guild Wars.
Another implication here is that in the end, All players will end up having the same story more or less, and most probably only differ in a mechanical way, some will have more of this or less of that depending on the choices they made during the dialogs, yet overall everyone is experiencing the same story and flow, just like an Offline game. That is a big concern from an MMO mindset point of view.
We do not have to pay a sub just to gather in a social hug and share with other players the way we went about solving this or that challenge, we can do that in a forum or teamspeak and Vent (in many cases also over diner or a Camping outing) for free, just like we all share our experiences that we had with an Offline game.
What makes an MMO great is the fact that every player has a unique story to tell, not the fact that everyone has a Hero story to tell, let alone a story that is dictated by the game itself.
In an offline game the player through their actions discovers the story, it causes it to unfold, in an MMO the story is being written as the player plays, but that means also that the story has not been pre-written.
And SW:TOR's experience seems to be all about the player paying a sub to discover the pre-written story, just like an Offline game.
Will it work? Only time will tell, there maybe some nich part of the Playerbase that will really relate to this, but in the long term, this approach will is not appealing to the MMO player.
In my opinion.
Its apparent you haven't followed this game or seen many videos at all. TOR does have very large, open worlds where players meet, fight in PvP and PvE, interact with the environment, and take control and influence the world. The actual instances and being alone are about 10 percent of the game. There is no social hub like Guild Wars, this is a true MMO.
Comments
Wow you make no sense. Just because people don't care about story in other mmos doesn't mean they won't in TOR. Reason they don't care in other games is because the quest story themselves are not important. Things would be different if your choices in a quest influenced your rep in any form.
Oh and even in WoW people care about the story, such as when the lich king died or first look at changes in lore. Difference is that quests themselves are so pointless 99% of the time that no one cares about them. Whether TOR will change this is another question but the first to actually attempt it.
Eh , the only ones that don't care for the story are the grinders. The reason we have grinds to begin with is the trend was "Fly threw the game fast" (because we enjoyed the MMO's of the older days) and ran out of content. Developers had to come up with ways to keep you the player based entertained, AKA the grind. The original MMO's like UO, EQ and even prior to graphic interface where all about story. RPG doesn't mean Repeat Rigorous Grinding, it means Role Playing Game, in which a story and plot you are part of. Hate to blow the load here, but it's not a huge secret, people are sick of the grind, sick of the trend that MMO's are taking. Bioware is bring back what MMO RPG's are all about, the story and friends. Game play, extras are just that, to enhance the game that we intend to enjoy the story on with friends.
It's actually that simple, grinding became the norm because it is the easiest and cheapest way for development teams to bring content out that will take you forever to get threw. WoW, as horrible as I hate to bring up that game , might have some grinding aspects, but what it does well is allow you to or not too grind. Any other MMO I can think of today, such as my fav at, lotro has a ton of grinding things, thou they have slowly but surly taken out the grind, it was for all intent at the time, meant to keep the player base busy while they could make content. Well at least that's what they said, you can see quality over quantity any day and at least they learned in that game, people will only take so much repeated crap before they leave. If anyone will pull this off right, it will be bioware. Am I a fan-boy? You bet, bioware has yet to let me down. Doesn't mean they won't here, but overall, just like blizzard(even they are a new team) still do well by keeping the principles that made them great in the first place.
"The monster created isn't by the company that makes the game, it's by the fans that make it something it never was"
I'm just afraid it's gonna be overhyped and filled to the eyeballs with cinematics. It's one of the few good Pay 2 Play games about to be released before the F2P game model destroys what's left of the MMORPG game style.
SO DO I!!! LoL
"Never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game."-Guybrush Threepwood
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."-Hunter S. Thompson
Odd but the one thing that makes me wary of this game is none of the 5 listed.
It is EA's involvement EA has canned more MMO's than all of the companies combined and they are notorious for doing it, I have almost no interest in this game because it just isn't a genre I like and I just don't like the look of it but I do believe that Bioware can produce a good game however as someone that played UO from the beginning I have a suspicion we will see Bioware go the way of Origin.
The Force is strong with BioWare.
It's all about content folks. Blizzard were a hugely successful company with lots of fans and tons of money before making WoW. BioWare is a hugely successful company with lots of fans and tons of money ... Hello?
I'd agree that the current hype isn't just from the fact that it's Star Wars. Star Wars has lost much of its lustre since the prequel debacle. The current hype probably has more to do with the fact that it's BioWare, and that they've already successfully made a classic Star Wars CRPG (by which I mean, it fit right into the Star Wars lore, respectfully and properly - so there shouldn't be any problem with the hardcore SW fans).
A few players skip dialogue/text as reflex, but most only skip dialogue/text if it's crap. So long as the teaming side of things isn't neglected (as it was, for example, sadly, in the recent Champions Online), a strong single player experience can only benefit an MMO.
Granted the people involved aren't idiots at ideas or management, then it really is all about money and content. You need tons of money to hire the people to make the content, and you need tons of money to market the game successfully. That's why Sony were successful in the past, that's why Blizzard were successful. That's why so many other companies haven't been successful (even if they've had some great ideas, etc.). If SW:TOR is successful, it will have been for the same reason.
As an old MMO player, the 5 reasons tated do not inspire me a bit.
I did not play WoW because it was made by Blizzard, I played WoW for the first time because my then favorite game, SWG, received an update (NGE) which basically wanted to copy WoW.
This statement may seem out of topic here but it is not. It simply means that when you try to outdo someone else, do something different and new with its own merits, don't just try to copy them in an attempt to get a peace of the pie, at least in the MMO world thatis what the record shows.
That being said, while some of the features BioWare is trying to advance seem to be "cool" at first glance, these also have some very negative implications within the context of an MMO.
"BioWare is promising that their first crack at an MMORPG will do everything their offline offerings have come to do so competently, and that includes offering a continuing narrative throughout the game and for your characters."
Everything that I have seen about this game this far, Previews, Trailers, Dev Logs etc, is painting a very Single Player kind of Gameplay experience for an MMO.
Back in the day of MMO, a character's story evolved by the player and their experiences in the Virtual World the MMO was set in. What you chose to do in any given situation affects that personal story, each activity maybe a short Adventure, and once several adventures accumulate that makes a Chapter in your story.
I beleive that Bioware, may have actually understod that part, and that is why their offline offerings have such acclaim and are loved my all those that play them (including myself), but the mindset of a player is not the same when it comes to an MMO.
In an MMO players expect to be able to adventure in the world with other players, interact in various manners, the game being the stage upon which the player stories are being created take place and unfold as wellas being recorded over time. Because it is all about the story of one's choices in response to challenges comming from that interaction with other playes....not the AI or the environment directly.
In an offline game it is about the player and the environemnt, but in an online game it is about the player and other players in the environment.
There is a big difference in terms of the mindset of a player and the expectations this mindset formulates thereafter.
So having seen trailers and read various information about the game, and from within the MMO mindset point of view I was left with a feeling of emptyness in the end.
This "MMO" looks to me like KOTOR or Dragon Age with a Subscription, it feels like an Offline game that you have to pay 2-10x more for (assuming 1-5 years playing).
There does not seem to be any real Online experience in it except the Multiplayer Mode of partying with others and doing together some specific missions, or gathering all together in to Social Hubs such as the ones found in Diablo and Guild Wars.
Another implication here is that in the end, All players will end up having the same story more or less, and most probably only differ in a mechanical way, some will have more of this or less of that depending on the choices they made during the dialogs, yet overall everyone is experiencing the same story and flow, just like an Offline game. That is a big concern from an MMO mindset point of view.
We do not have to pay a sub just to gather in a social hug and share with other players the way we went about solving this or that challenge, we can do that in a forum or teamspeak and Vent (in many cases also over diner or a Camping outing) for free, just like we all share our experiences that we had with an Offline game.
What makes an MMO great is the fact that every player has a unique story to tell, not the fact that everyone has a Hero story to tell, let alone a story that is dictated by the game itself.
In an offline game the player through their actions discovers the story, it causes it to unfold, in an MMO the story is being written as the player plays, but that means also that the story has not been pre-written.
And SW:TOR's experience seems to be all about the player paying a sub to discover the pre-written story, just like an Offline game.
Will it work? Only time will tell, there maybe some nich part of the Playerbase that will really relate to this, but in the long term, this approach will is not appealing to the MMO player.
In my opinion.
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
He touches here on the fundemental question of a MMORPG but doesn't go deep enough. What is a MMORPG about? Why do people play it?
Is it a RPG with lobby where you can show of your stats?
Is it a Roleplaying game where you can pretend to be someone else and life a fantasy?
Is it an adventure engine were you group up with friends and experience an adventure?
A LOT of MMORPG developers seem to take the approach that it is a slash-em-up with a very basic social element. Just compare your email program with the mail you get in any game. The chat channels in game with IRC. The social panel with Facebook. See? Clearly MMORPG companies don't consider the social aspect to be all that important. A clear example is Lord of the Rings Online where they keep insisting in breaking up groups by having solo quests that are meaningless drivel in the group content.
Wouldn't it be a LOT easier to get a group going if the solo and group content was clearly seperated so that once you did form a group, you could keep it going in one smooth run, instead of it constantly being interrupted by run around quests and forced solo content?
SWTOR seems to have taken the approach that since games have very pool tools and design in place to facilitate groups, lots of the content must be solo friendly. I predict you will get lots of people who are socially inept racing through the content looking for some mystical end-game were they will stop the race and have fun, but they never reach that point.
SWTOR will be Kotor 3, and Kotor 3 is bound to sell well. But it won't be the new Ultima Online or Everquest let alone Star Wars Galaxies. Not that these games were perfect as games, but they were perfect at forcing people to form a community. Those that couldn't be social soon dropped out, leaving the people that could work together.
And the sad fact is that the financial success of SWTOR will make other MMORPG developers make their game more and more solo only, forever forgetting that without the in game friends, people have no commitment to the game. Why do people still play Everquest and Ultima Online? Because of the people.
Think about the countless games that have failed since then, all solo friendly. People play, they see what thegame has to offer and when a more shiny thing comes along they flock to it because their is nothing keeping them in the game.
SWTOR will be to MMORPG what Doom was to Adventures. Every single company now produces FPS because that is what sells, and adventures don't because they are not 3D so how could they sell? Even Funcom with its sleeper hit "The longest journey" had to turn it into a beat-em-up because... because no game developer can resist the easy path.
Solo is the dark side. Easier, quicker, but ultimately drains the life right out of a game.
So it will sell a million or so copies, then 6 months after will have 100k subs at most.
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
Can you also tell me the winning lotto numbers since you can see the future?
I've got 1 good reason why it's going to be a success.
1. It's got the same gameplay mechanics as WoW. Skilless tab targeting and non-action oriented combat, thus making it WoW with a different skin. WoW fanboys and Star Wars fanboys will flock to this one no doubt.
I personally will wait for the actual skill based combat system that TERA Online will offer when it is released. I am not a carebear player so playing on the PvEasy servers do not appeal to me nor does the full voice dialog thing.
If the combat system is skilless, as it does appear to be, then I will sit this one out.
Do or do not...there is no try.
The Force WAS with us, then came the CU!
Its apparent you haven't followed this game or seen many videos at all. TOR does have very large, open worlds where players meet, fight in PvP and PvE, interact with the environment, and take control and influence the world. The actual instances and being alone are about 10 percent of the game. There is no social hub like Guild Wars, this is a true MMO.