Saying that something will change questing forever to me is almost like saying you've just revolutionized the telegraph. For the kind of leveling quests one finds in a traditional MMO (kill, collect, escort, whatever), dynamic events are superior in every way.
The only way that dynamic events aren't superior is providing an individual arcing epic questline, which is why GW2 also has the personal story. And both GW2 and SWTOR will have fully voiced and branching content in that regard.
Putting VO on traditional quests doesn't solve their underlying problems, especially when it comes to their being isolating as opposed to community building.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it."-Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
Will this be another one of those "man if they had just waited another 6 months to put that feature in that would have been so huge" game that focuses too much on one thing.
Only time will tell. Most of the things you mentioned weren't required for the success of other MMO's though, or merely a trivial nice-to-have thing.
Cross server war fronts would not have helped Aion? Really? Swimming would not have helped Aion. it is going on 2 years and they are just now about to fix that mistake. Add ons that were not exploits would have helped.
Cross server LFG has just about killed every "omg this game is dying" thread in Rift and WoW after it was put in. Pve and pvp damage separated not being separated results in 7 years worth of back and forth class balancing that you see in WoW. Rift pvp issues would be 10 times worse if they had not done it. Guild wars is actually famous for doing it.
The OP can point the finger and say voice over is required and I can point the finger right back at him also.
"All we have is our word" is a pretty relevant statement and given that I expect many people to deny this topic any credibility whether they really believe it deep down or not but the fact is since TOR is going to be the biggest mmorpg since WOW it will be copied and one of the only things you can copy that will be unique to it is it's story elements so yes this will change the face of AAA mmo's just don't tell the TOR haters.
I've been playing KOTOR (I and II) again (yeah still had the cd's) and I've enjoyed it so much. The storytelling, interraction with your companions etc. Of course MEI and II as well as DA:OI and II improved them but still KOTOR holds a dear place in my heart.
And I noticed that Kreia in Sith Lords has the looks and the voice of the Witch of the Wilds in DA:O ... I wonder who she'll be in SW:TOR... will be fun to try to spot it.
Voice-over is awesome, but there are a couple of negative consequences:
Greatly increases the cost of development (in terms of time/resources). This means given a fixed budget, having VO means not having something other feature.
Lowers quality in other areas - once you record a VO, you are kind of locked to it. This means if you record a VO to kill ten rats, and later the developers say "this quest kinda sucks, lets completely change it" they can't. Because changing the quest also means re-recording the VO, and this gets expensive. Especially because most MMOs launch in at least 4 languages. So it lowers the total number of iterations allowed in the budget. Iterating on a feature is how you improve it.
Increases linearity, because with any sort of branching quest or story the cost rises exponentially.
So the thing is, if VO does become a standard feature that gamers demand to the point where producers in the MMO industry consider it a must-have feature, then MMOs in general will cost more money (which means we'll get less of them coming to market) and will have have less gameplay features than they to today.
I don't think people realize how much of a time sink all this voice over is going to add to questing.
No longer do you get your quest and go.. you listen to an NPC tell you about it and react to it. You're going to do this, forever.
The first time through wouldn't be too bad.. but after a while.. a majority of your game experience is going to be spent listening to NPCs talk rather than playing the game.
Voice-over is awesome, but there are a couple of negative consequences:
Greatly increases the cost of development (in terms of time/resources). This means given a fixed budget, having VO means not having something other feature.
Lowers quality in other areas - once you record a VO, you are kind of locked to it. This means if you record a VO to kill ten rats, and later the developers say "this quest kinda sucks, lets completely change it" they can't. Because changing the quest also means re-recording the VO, and this gets expensive. Especially because most MMOs launch in at least 4 languages. So it lowers the total number of iterations allowed in the budget. Iterating on a feature is how you improve it.
Increases linearity, because with any sort of branching quest or story the cost rises exponentially.
So the thing is, if VO does become a standard feature that gamers demand to the point where producers in the MMO industry consider it a must-have feature, then MMOs in general will cost more money (which means we'll get less of them coming to market) and will have have less gameplay features than they to today.
All very good points but let's take a look more specifically at option number three as it stands now quests are extremely static they never change at all anyway so how would that become a negative effect. If BW chooses to offer branching paths it would still be exclusive to them everyone else has that one particular quest that you either take or you don't whether you do it or not has no bearing on the outcome of your gaming experience so I can't look upon this is really a negative
Originally posted by Dakirn I don't think people realize how much of a time sink all this voice over is going to add to questing.No longer do you get your quest and go.. you listen to an NPC tell you about it and react to it. You're going to do this, forever.The first time through wouldn't be too bad.. but after a while.. a majority of your game experience is going to be spent listening to NPCs talk rather than playing the game.I guess if that's exciting...
In most of the games I've played (or all) the quest giver's spiel can be skipped. You won't want to skip it the first time, in case you miss something, but the second or third time you're going to jump past unimportant stuff.
Adding time is good for Bioware though...some of that 200 hours of game play is bound to be in listening to the quest givers.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Voice overs are a nice touch first time through,but we are building an mmo here.We need this game to have staying power,so it will need to build upon mmo qualities that makes it worthwhile playing 3/4/5 years from now.
We are used to mini updates,mini content that gets added to our games for free,well not really free since we pay 15 buck sub fees.I doubt Bioware will be able to or want to hire out those same voice actors in between xpansion packs,so this mean no mini content updates?
I might also add these static npc's are not so changed just becuase they have a voice over.You could stand there and click that same npc a few times and he will just repeat the same dialogue over and over,it begins to revert back to a static npc.I also wonder if these npc's move about trhe game world or are they still static fixtures with markers?I would MUCH rather have non static npc's in my gaming than the voice overs.
I could be wrong but i doubt it,these voice overs will be very minimal,example maybe 3 choices following along the good.evil/neutral line.I am also quite positive Bioware is only attempting voice overs in this MMo because it makes a profit on being the most well known IP in the world.
To say it is the future satandard,when devs are making new MMO's from not so well known entities,i think is really stretching it.Could a Wow2 or a EQ3 pull it off,probably but again established IP's.I don't think this si the future standard yet,not for some time and there is imo better ways to improve this genre before needing voice overs.
Is voice overs a nice touch to the game?YES most definitely,will it make or break the game or determine if i play it?Nope not one bit.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Will this be another one of those "man if they had just waited another 6 months to put that feature in that would have been so huge" game that focuses too much on one thing.
Only time will tell. Most of the things you mentioned weren't required for the success of other MMO's though, or merely a trivial nice-to-have thing.
Cross server war fronts would not have helped Aion? Really? Swimming would not have helped Aion. it is going on 2 years and they are just now about to fix that mistake. Add ons that were not exploits would have helped.
Cross server LFG has just about killed every "omg this game is dying" thread in Rift and WoW after it was put in. Pve and pvp damage separated not being separated results in 7 years worth of back and forth class balancing that you see in WoW. Rift pvp issues would be 10 times worse if they had not done it. Guild wars is actually famous for doing it.
The OP can point the finger and say voice over is required and I can point the finger right back at him also.
I see. You're going with the 'everything that Rift has is good because that's the game that's my number 1 game' angle.
Good for you. However, MMO's have been able to be quite successful for quite a number of years without having a cross server LFG. Also, Aion managed to rake in iirc over 200 million dollars in revenues last year and still has something like 70-100 servers worldwide - the world is bigger than only the US or Europe, you know. So I'm guessing they've been doing alright too without swimming. As for GW, it sold like 7 million units of the game.
Anyway, this is getting kind of useless as a discussion if this becomes an "I only acknowledge things that are in Rift to be good and valuable and all the rest is pure shit if it isn't in Rift" kind of discussion. I guess we'll see how things turn out after the launch of the upcoming MMO's what was required or not
Personally, I think that the majority of MMO gamers will like SWTOR's VO and cinematic questing more than the traditional currently seen questing, because the majority of people who played it was more positive and enthusiastic about it and because I've heard almost no one not even among those who're sceptic towards the cinematic questing use as argument "I want my questing to stay exactly as it is right now in current MMO's, textbased, it should remain traditionally like in LotrO, EQ2, etc".
Originally posted by Wizardry
To say it is the future satandard,when devs are making new MMO's from not so well known entities,i think is really stretching it.Could a Wow2 or a EQ3 pull it off,probably but again established IP's.I don't think this si the future standard yet,not for some time and there is imo better ways to improve this genre before needing voice overs.
You seem to ignore all the other upcoming MMO's besides SWTOR that will use VO and cinematics to an extent that's more and deeper permeated throughout the game and gameplay than former MMORPG's have done.
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."
It's not the voice-overs that excite me. The dialogue could have been all text, for all I care. What excites me is that it's actually dialogue, rather than monologues with an “Accept Quest” button.
More over, it excites me that these dialogues are multiplayer. That's something I've been screaming about RPGs needing for almost two decades that they still don't have, and I think it's bizarre, but welcome, that the first game to do it is an MMO.
Originally posted by Dakirn
I don't think people realize how much of a time sink all this voice over is going to add to questing.
I don't agree that this would be a detriment otherwise, but most of the voice-overs are skippable.
Favorites: EQ, EVE | Playing: None. Mostly VR and strategy | Anticipating: CU, Pantheon
It's not the voice-overs that excite me. The dialogue could have been all text, for all I care. What excites me is that it's actually dialogue, rather than monologues with an “Accept Quest” button.
More over, it excites me that these dialogues are multiplayer. That's something I've been screaming about RPGs needing for almost two decades that they still don't have, and I think it's bizarre, but welcome, that the first game to do it is an MMO.
Originally posted by Dakirn
I don't think people realize how much of a time sink all this voice over is going to add to questing.
I don't agree that this would be a detriment otherwise, but most of the voice-overs are skippable.
Exactly! I've always found it weird how you run up to some dude who then proceeds to talk for what seems to be five minutes straight with all that quest text and then you finally answer "I accept" or just walk away (pretty rude if you ask me).
<childish, provocative and highly speculative banner about your favorite game goes here>
I speak from my WoW experience, but as anyone who played that game knows the questing style changed dramatically between Burning Crusade and Wrath and finally Cataclysm from mostly picking up kill quests with rare questlines to almost completly storyline progression, truely a theme ride MMO.
And it seemed fun at first. But the problem is that style of questing has zero replayability and that's a bad thing in a MMO. People played WoW for years because they could reroll another character, another faction and have a different experience picking new zones, new quests each time and just grinding if they felt like it.
But now the second time and every time after is a chore. And that's why i don't play WoW anymore.
And it's not like it's the first game to try it. AoC did, for the whole start of the game it was voiced and fat good that did them. Just because it's voiced and has a storyline it dosen't mean you want to do it again, in fact the opposite the second time around, it feels forced.
And it's not just about rerolling here, who wants to run an instance 20 times for the Laser Rifle of Sith Slaying and go through the same dialog options 20 times ? Ugh..
This style of questing may be the norm for single player games but MMOs need to provide content and keep player attention for months and years. I think a year down the line it's problems and limitations will become clear or the devs will stand there scratching their hads wondering why everyone is bored and quiting all of a sudden.
OMG! Thank you.
Too many people here have zero clue and only froth at the mouth protecting this game, yes it'll be fun for a month or two, then watch the mass exodus just like AoC.
I don't think people realize how much of a time sink all this voice over is going to add to questing.
No longer do you get your quest and go.. you listen to an NPC tell you about it and react to it. You're going to do this, forever.
The first time through wouldn't be too bad.. but after a while.. a majority of your game experience is going to be spent listening to NPCs talk rather than playing the game.
I guess if that's exciting...
i just can't sign in to your point of few.
No longer do you get your quest and go.. you listen to an NPC tell you about it and react to it. You're going to do this, forever.
um, "good!"
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
As long as each class has it's own storyline quest to experience I think it'll be alright. They are not the first to use VO in an MMO so that one is put down. So aside from being fully VO the quests are exactlly like the quests we have seen in every MMO to date.
"I speak from my WoW experience, but as anyone who played that game knows the questing style changed dramatically between Burning Crusade and Wrath and finally Cataclysm from mostly picking up kill quests with rare questlines to almost completly storyline progression, truely a theme ride MMO.
And it seemed fun at first. But the problem is that style of questing has zero replayability and that's a bad thing in a MMO. People played WoW for years because they could reroll another character, another faction and have a different experience picking new zones, new quests each time and just grinding if they felt like it."
And this differ's from killing 10 bunny rabbits exactly how? Your forgetting that at least for the story arc''s the questlines will differ somewhat. I dunno why people such as yourself want to point out the obvious and call it a flaw of some sort. There will be quests and that's not always a bad thing. If you don't want to play it, that's fine too. I could care less.
I may hate the game but I'm going to give it a shot. I realize what it is. It isn't exactly what I'd hoped for but I'm ready for a sci fi setting for a change. I'm honestly sick of fantasy to the point of puking. Everyone seems to be on the TOR hate bandwagon for some reason. It's not like guild wars is doing anything massively different and the differences it does have I don't personally like. I'm not going to bash it though. Just because I don't like it dosen't mean others won't.
TOR isn't doing anything dramaticlaly different, yes we all realize that. Explain to me though how your supposed to get around questing though. Would you rather have...none? Personally I hated in EQ when it said you would get quest exp but really you couldn't even see the bar move. If you don't want to do quests, then don't do them. WoW shows that people will do quests and the treadmill for gear for a long time though. /shrug
To answer a question. Yes, I'd rather have a sandbox SW game similar to galaxies but that's not what it is. it's going to be similiar to WoW with roots back to EQ. It's not like anyeone at Bioware lied to you about that.
Personally I like the way Bioware is using voiceacting and dialigue choices to make me feel immersed in the game as opposed to read some text and go do it. My choices have effect and consequesnces. I have enjoyed Bioware games because of this. IMO its a good route that all MMO's should follow.
***Raises plunger in salute to Bioware implementation of storyline!***
All my opinions are just that..opinions. If you like my opinions..coolness.If you dont like my opinion....I really dont care. Playing: ESO, WOT, Smite, and Marvel Heroes
You can sugar coat the kill ten X and collect ten Y quests all you want, but in the end they're still the same old boring quests we've been doing for the past 10 years.
I stopped reading when he said that Rift "does a fairly good job of portraying story". I've played 30+ MMOs and while i rather enjoyed Rift, I'll be the first to admit that it's probably one of the worst MMO games ever in terms of story. I can only think of one that was worse and that was AION.
If he thinks that Rift did a good job on story, I think the best thing to do is to consider that any further opinions he has on story should be taken as the direct opposite of the truth.
It's like saying: "well, Tetris did a faily good job on graphics, so SWTOR will be even better". Uhm.. yeah.. but that's not really saying much.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall Currently Playing: ESO
I speak from my WoW experience, but as anyone who played that game knows the questing style changed dramatically between Burning Crusade and Wrath and finally Cataclysm from mostly picking up kill quests with rare questlines to almost completly storyline progression, truely a theme ride MMO.
And it seemed fun at first. But the problem is that style of questing has zero replayability and that's a bad thing in a MMO. People played WoW for years because they could reroll another character, another faction and have a different experience picking new zones, new quests each time and just grinding if they felt like it.
But now the second time and every time after is a chore. And that's why i don't play WoW anymore.
And it's not like it's the first game to try it. AoC did, for the whole start of the game it was voiced and fat good that did them. Just because it's voiced and has a storyline it dosen't mean you want to do it again, in fact the opposite the second time around, it feels forced.
And it's not just about rerolling here, who wants to run an instance 20 times for the Laser Rifle of Sith Slaying and go through the same dialog options 20 times ? Ugh..
This style of questing may be the norm for single player games but MMOs need to provide content and keep player attention for months and years. I think a year down the line it's problems and limitations will become clear or the devs will stand there scratching their hads wondering why everyone is bored and quiting all of a sudden.
OMG! Thank you.
Too many people here have zero clue and only froth at the mouth protecting this game, yes it'll be fun for a month or two, then watch the mass exodus just like AoC.
The usual replies are; well its themepark don't you know, the only word i know is themepark, i have to use themepark in every post, well if you don't know themepark then go away because this is a themepark, you have something negative to say about my themepark well it's because its a themepark and you obviously have no clue about themepark mmo's go play another game because this is a themepark and if you are bored of themepark's, then please just go away and leave my themepark.
I agree as well, Storyline based quests just have 0 replay value in a mmorpg. Its so boring the second time around. ALso no matter how much storyline bioware add's its still gonna boil down to: "Go kill 5 rats then come back and talk to me" like in every other mmorpg. Except the 2nd time you have to sit thru the now redundant yapping of voice acting. I hate to say it but SWToR is honestly just another world of warcraft theme park-like clone like most other mmo's that have come out since WoW's massive success, it'll have massive box sales thats a for sure due to fanboys who are too blinded by what they like, to see swtor for what it is, but I bet after 1-3 months it'll turn into a near ghost town, just like Rift and AoC and many other themepark mmo's.
I View themepark mmo's like SWToR, Rift, WoW as "Short-term mmo's" mmo's that are good for 1-3 months then you drop them since it lacks replayability. How WoW keeps its high sub numbers is beyond me, the raiding is totally pointless (Due to no real use for the gear but more of the same pve raids). All I know is WoW must have something other themepark mmo's lack to keep so many people entranced in it, and its surely not storyline. Maybe because its Ez-Mode compared to other mmorpgs? I dunno, it just has something most mmo's lack. Might be the fact you can login for like an hour or so a day and get something done, this is something many mmo's fail at, maybe its the fact wow caters to casuals with little time to play so well? Even the "raids" (If you can even call them that I don't consier "raids" in wow a real raid at all, real raids have 40+ people and a time commitment not this 10 man 1-2 hour shit.) can be done in 1-2 hours for some of them.
All in all i've lost most of my interest in mmorpgs since they all feel to much alike since WoW has come out, and SWToR is no exception. Though I do tend to try any mmo that does come out once in the faint glimmer of hope it might be decent enough to stick with.. Sadly, since WoW.. Still trying to find that one, maybe I am to hard to please XD.
Most devs start to notice people quitting even within the first month in themeparks, Rift for example lost about 75% of its playerbase by the 2nd or 3rd month, since the game offers very little replay value.
The best thing you can get in any mmorpg is a good guild with talkative people to hang with, this honestly is what keeps a mmo alive, because really, if you wanna solo all the time, why not just play a single player game? its the same thing bascally. This is another issue with mmo's they are getting way to soloable, imo you should be forced to group to advance after a certan point. FF11 is a example of this before abysea, soloing is so slow that most people group up to level. You can solo but its much MUCH slower than teaming up. You should not be able to hit max level in any mmorpg solo because thats just stupid and defeats the purpose of it being massivly multiplayer. Maybe get about halfway to cap then after that you need to team, or even 25% to cap then your forced to group up. DAOC did this right, you can solo but yeah alot of downtime for most classes, so teaming is the better option usually, well least when I played it that was years ago, who knows how it is now since most mmo's that are p2p try to wowify themseleves for a piece of the pie.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
Great write up, Bill. I especially dig the following paragraph:
"Is everyone and their mother .... then we can write a new article)."
The kind of clearheaded observations I appreciate from you
Expecting a lot out of it myself too. I clearly remember how AoC felt empty and uncomplete after Tortage when the VO's suddenly ran out. A stark contrast I wouldn't have expected, (and that story wasn't even so particularly immersive).
I see the difference in the delivery as the key. The missions do not seem to be "go kill x of y". Instead you have a story that makes sense and you (hopefully) want to do, then as you are working that story, up pops a bonus quest that you will most likely finish, or come very close to, as you do your mission that gives you a bonus for completing. Still, you do not HAVE to do that "kill x of y" bonus quest to complete the actual quest if you don't want too. It may not seem like a big difference in actual game play, but the delivery and end effect are completely different on gameplay in my opinion.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
Comments
Saying that something will change questing forever to me is almost like saying you've just revolutionized the telegraph. For the kind of leveling quests one finds in a traditional MMO (kill, collect, escort, whatever), dynamic events are superior in every way.
The only way that dynamic events aren't superior is providing an individual arcing epic questline, which is why GW2 also has the personal story. And both GW2 and SWTOR will have fully voiced and branching content in that regard.
Putting VO on traditional quests doesn't solve their underlying problems, especially when it comes to their being isolating as opposed to community building.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
Cross server war fronts would not have helped Aion? Really? Swimming would not have helped Aion. it is going on 2 years and they are just now about to fix that mistake. Add ons that were not exploits would have helped.
Cross server LFG has just about killed every "omg this game is dying" thread in Rift and WoW after it was put in. Pve and pvp damage separated not being separated results in 7 years worth of back and forth class balancing that you see in WoW. Rift pvp issues would be 10 times worse if they had not done it. Guild wars is actually famous for doing it.
The OP can point the finger and say voice over is required and I can point the finger right back at him also.
"All we have is our word" is a pretty relevant statement and given that I expect many people to deny this topic any credibility whether they really believe it deep down or not but the fact is since TOR is going to be the biggest mmorpg since WOW it will be copied and one of the only things you can copy that will be unique to it is it's story elements so yes this will change the face of AAA mmo's just don't tell the TOR haters.
I've been playing KOTOR (I and II) again (yeah still had the cd's) and I've enjoyed it so much. The storytelling, interraction with your companions etc. Of course MEI and II as well as DA:OI and II improved them but still KOTOR holds a dear place in my heart.
And I noticed that Kreia in Sith Lords has the looks and the voice of the Witch of the Wilds in DA:O ... I wonder who she'll be in SW:TOR... will be fun to try to spot it.
Voice-over is awesome, but there are a couple of negative consequences:
Greatly increases the cost of development (in terms of time/resources). This means given a fixed budget, having VO means not having something other feature.
Lowers quality in other areas - once you record a VO, you are kind of locked to it. This means if you record a VO to kill ten rats, and later the developers say "this quest kinda sucks, lets completely change it" they can't. Because changing the quest also means re-recording the VO, and this gets expensive. Especially because most MMOs launch in at least 4 languages. So it lowers the total number of iterations allowed in the budget. Iterating on a feature is how you improve it.
Increases linearity, because with any sort of branching quest or story the cost rises exponentially.
So the thing is, if VO does become a standard feature that gamers demand to the point where producers in the MMO industry consider it a must-have feature, then MMOs in general will cost more money (which means we'll get less of them coming to market) and will have have less gameplay features than they to today.
I don't think people realize how much of a time sink all this voice over is going to add to questing.
No longer do you get your quest and go.. you listen to an NPC tell you about it and react to it. You're going to do this, forever.
The first time through wouldn't be too bad.. but after a while.. a majority of your game experience is going to be spent listening to NPCs talk rather than playing the game.
I guess if that's exciting...
All very good points but let's take a look more specifically at option number three as it stands now quests are extremely static they never change at all anyway so how would that become a negative effect. If BW chooses to offer branching paths it would still be exclusive to them everyone else has that one particular quest that you either take or you don't whether you do it or not has no bearing on the outcome of your gaming experience so I can't look upon this is really a negative
In most of the games I've played (or all) the quest giver's spiel can be skipped. You won't want to skip it the first time, in case you miss something, but the second or third time you're going to jump past unimportant stuff.
Adding time is good for Bioware though...some of that 200 hours of game play is bound to be in listening to the quest givers.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Voice overs are a nice touch first time through,but we are building an mmo here.We need this game to have staying power,so it will need to build upon mmo qualities that makes it worthwhile playing 3/4/5 years from now.
We are used to mini updates,mini content that gets added to our games for free,well not really free since we pay 15 buck sub fees.I doubt Bioware will be able to or want to hire out those same voice actors in between xpansion packs,so this mean no mini content updates?
I might also add these static npc's are not so changed just becuase they have a voice over.You could stand there and click that same npc a few times and he will just repeat the same dialogue over and over,it begins to revert back to a static npc.I also wonder if these npc's move about trhe game world or are they still static fixtures with markers?I would MUCH rather have non static npc's in my gaming than the voice overs.
I could be wrong but i doubt it,these voice overs will be very minimal,example maybe 3 choices following along the good.evil/neutral line.I am also quite positive Bioware is only attempting voice overs in this MMo because it makes a profit on being the most well known IP in the world.
To say it is the future satandard,when devs are making new MMO's from not so well known entities,i think is really stretching it.Could a Wow2 or a EQ3 pull it off,probably but again established IP's.I don't think this si the future standard yet,not for some time and there is imo better ways to improve this genre before needing voice overs.
Is voice overs a nice touch to the game?YES most definitely,will it make or break the game or determine if i play it?Nope not one bit.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I see. You're going with the 'everything that Rift has is good because that's the game that's my number 1 game' angle.
Good for you. However, MMO's have been able to be quite successful for quite a number of years without having a cross server LFG. Also, Aion managed to rake in iirc over 200 million dollars in revenues last year and still has something like 70-100 servers worldwide - the world is bigger than only the US or Europe, you know. So I'm guessing they've been doing alright too without swimming. As for GW, it sold like 7 million units of the game.
Anyway, this is getting kind of useless as a discussion if this becomes an "I only acknowledge things that are in Rift to be good and valuable and all the rest is pure shit if it isn't in Rift" kind of discussion. I guess we'll see how things turn out after the launch of the upcoming MMO's what was required or not
Personally, I think that the majority of MMO gamers will like SWTOR's VO and cinematic questing more than the traditional currently seen questing, because the majority of people who played it was more positive and enthusiastic about it and because I've heard almost no one not even among those who're sceptic towards the cinematic questing use as argument "I want my questing to stay exactly as it is right now in current MMO's, textbased, it should remain traditionally like in LotrO, EQ2, etc".
You seem to ignore all the other upcoming MMO's besides SWTOR that will use VO and cinematics to an extent that's more and deeper permeated throughout the game and gameplay than former MMORPG's have done.
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."
It's not the voice-overs that excite me. The dialogue could have been all text, for all I care. What excites me is that it's actually dialogue, rather than monologues with an “Accept Quest” button.
More over, it excites me that these dialogues are multiplayer. That's something I've been screaming about RPGs needing for almost two decades that they still don't have, and I think it's bizarre, but welcome, that the first game to do it is an MMO.
I don't agree that this would be a detriment otherwise, but most of the voice-overs are skippable.
Exactly! I've always found it weird how you run up to some dude who then proceeds to talk for what seems to be five minutes straight with all that quest text and then you finally answer "I accept" or just walk away (pretty rude if you ask me).
<childish, provocative and highly speculative banner about your favorite game goes here>
OMG! Thank you.
Too many people here have zero clue and only froth at the mouth protecting this game, yes it'll be fun for a month or two, then watch the mass exodus just like AoC.
i just can't sign in to your point of few.
No longer do you get your quest and go.. you listen to an NPC tell you about it and react to it. You're going to do this, forever.
um, "good!"
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
As long as each class has it's own storyline quest to experience I think it'll be alright. They are not the first to use VO in an MMO so that one is put down. So aside from being fully VO the quests are exactlly like the quests we have seen in every MMO to date.
My theme song.
"I speak from my WoW experience, but as anyone who played that game knows the questing style changed dramatically between Burning Crusade and Wrath and finally Cataclysm from mostly picking up kill quests with rare questlines to almost completly storyline progression, truely a theme ride MMO.
And it seemed fun at first. But the problem is that style of questing has zero replayability and that's a bad thing in a MMO. People played WoW for years because they could reroll another character, another faction and have a different experience picking new zones, new quests each time and just grinding if they felt like it."
And this differ's from killing 10 bunny rabbits exactly how? Your forgetting that at least for the story arc''s the questlines will differ somewhat. I dunno why people such as yourself want to point out the obvious and call it a flaw of some sort. There will be quests and that's not always a bad thing. If you don't want to play it, that's fine too. I could care less.
I may hate the game but I'm going to give it a shot. I realize what it is. It isn't exactly what I'd hoped for but I'm ready for a sci fi setting for a change. I'm honestly sick of fantasy to the point of puking. Everyone seems to be on the TOR hate bandwagon for some reason. It's not like guild wars is doing anything massively different and the differences it does have I don't personally like. I'm not going to bash it though. Just because I don't like it dosen't mean others won't.
TOR isn't doing anything dramaticlaly different, yes we all realize that. Explain to me though how your supposed to get around questing though. Would you rather have...none? Personally I hated in EQ when it said you would get quest exp but really you couldn't even see the bar move. If you don't want to do quests, then don't do them. WoW shows that people will do quests and the treadmill for gear for a long time though. /shrug
To answer a question. Yes, I'd rather have a sandbox SW game similar to galaxies but that's not what it is. it's going to be similiar to WoW with roots back to EQ. It's not like anyeone at Bioware lied to you about that.
Personally I like the way Bioware is using voiceacting and dialigue choices to make me feel immersed in the game as opposed to read some text and go do it. My choices have effect and consequesnces. I have enjoyed Bioware games because of this. IMO its a good route that all MMO's should follow.
***Raises plunger in salute to Bioware implementation of storyline!***
All my opinions are just that..opinions. If you like my opinions..coolness.If you dont like my opinion....I really dont care.
Playing: ESO, WOT, Smite, and Marvel Heroes
You can sugar coat the kill ten X and collect ten Y quests all you want, but in the end they're still the same old boring quests we've been doing for the past 10 years.
Let's see how long the novelty of it lasts.
I stopped reading when he said that Rift "does a fairly good job of portraying story". I've played 30+ MMOs and while i rather enjoyed Rift, I'll be the first to admit that it's probably one of the worst MMO games ever in terms of story. I can only think of one that was worse and that was AION.
If he thinks that Rift did a good job on story, I think the best thing to do is to consider that any further opinions he has on story should be taken as the direct opposite of the truth.
It's like saying: "well, Tetris did a faily good job on graphics, so SWTOR will be even better". Uhm.. yeah.. but that's not really saying much.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
I agree as well, Storyline based quests just have 0 replay value in a mmorpg. Its so boring the second time around. ALso no matter how much storyline bioware add's its still gonna boil down to: "Go kill 5 rats then come back and talk to me" like in every other mmorpg. Except the 2nd time you have to sit thru the now redundant yapping of voice acting. I hate to say it but SWToR is honestly just another world of warcraft theme park-like clone like most other mmo's that have come out since WoW's massive success, it'll have massive box sales thats a for sure due to fanboys who are too blinded by what they like, to see swtor for what it is, but I bet after 1-3 months it'll turn into a near ghost town, just like Rift and AoC and many other themepark mmo's.
I View themepark mmo's like SWToR, Rift, WoW as "Short-term mmo's" mmo's that are good for 1-3 months then you drop them since it lacks replayability. How WoW keeps its high sub numbers is beyond me, the raiding is totally pointless (Due to no real use for the gear but more of the same pve raids). All I know is WoW must have something other themepark mmo's lack to keep so many people entranced in it, and its surely not storyline. Maybe because its Ez-Mode compared to other mmorpgs? I dunno, it just has something most mmo's lack. Might be the fact you can login for like an hour or so a day and get something done, this is something many mmo's fail at, maybe its the fact wow caters to casuals with little time to play so well? Even the "raids" (If you can even call them that I don't consier "raids" in wow a real raid at all, real raids have 40+ people and a time commitment not this 10 man 1-2 hour shit.) can be done in 1-2 hours for some of them.
All in all i've lost most of my interest in mmorpgs since they all feel to much alike since WoW has come out, and SWToR is no exception. Though I do tend to try any mmo that does come out once in the faint glimmer of hope it might be decent enough to stick with.. Sadly, since WoW.. Still trying to find that one, maybe I am to hard to please XD.
Most devs start to notice people quitting even within the first month in themeparks, Rift for example lost about 75% of its playerbase by the 2nd or 3rd month, since the game offers very little replay value.
The best thing you can get in any mmorpg is a good guild with talkative people to hang with, this honestly is what keeps a mmo alive, because really, if you wanna solo all the time, why not just play a single player game? its the same thing bascally. This is another issue with mmo's they are getting way to soloable, imo you should be forced to group to advance after a certan point. FF11 is a example of this before abysea, soloing is so slow that most people group up to level. You can solo but its much MUCH slower than teaming up. You should not be able to hit max level in any mmorpg solo because thats just stupid and defeats the purpose of it being massivly multiplayer. Maybe get about halfway to cap then after that you need to team, or even 25% to cap then your forced to group up. DAOC did this right, you can solo but yeah alot of downtime for most classes, so teaming is the better option usually, well least when I played it that was years ago, who knows how it is now since most mmo's that are p2p try to wowify themseleves for a piece of the pie.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
Either way, you can't lose! Try it out sometime!
Great write up, Bill. I especially dig the following paragraph:
"Is everyone and their mother .... then we can write a new article)."
The kind of clearheaded observations I appreciate from you
Expecting a lot out of it myself too. I clearly remember how AoC felt empty and uncomplete after Tortage when the VO's suddenly ran out. A stark contrast I wouldn't have expected, (and that story wasn't even so particularly immersive).
My brand new bloggity blog.
If it suceeds. No two ways about it no idea catches on today unless it makes them 12 millions subscribers worth of cash.
Thank Grimnir it won't because the MMO budget is already too large.
It is best for the industry the MMO throne remains an dusty empty seat never to be filled.
I see the difference in the delivery as the key. The missions do not seem to be "go kill x of y". Instead you have a story that makes sense and you (hopefully) want to do, then as you are working that story, up pops a bonus quest that you will most likely finish, or come very close to, as you do your mission that gives you a bonus for completing. Still, you do not HAVE to do that "kill x of y" bonus quest to complete the actual quest if you don't want too. It may not seem like a big difference in actual game play, but the delivery and end effect are completely different on gameplay in my opinion.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
Reading a quest to kill 10 rats: same old, same old.
Voice actor telling me to kill 10 rats: A REVOLUTION!