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Star Wars: The Old Republic: Swan Song for the Traditional MMO?
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
About a week from now, Star Wars: The Old Republic will burst onto the MMO scene in a big way. The game comes with lots of action, lots of content and everything else we seem to expect from our games any more. In a new article about the game, we wonder whether SWTOR is the end of the line for what has become the "traditional MMO" during the past decade. See if you agree or not and then discuss the article in the comments.
With the beta weekends over, NDA lifted, and launch approaching later this month, speculation and flame wars about Star Wars: The Old Republic have reached a fevered pitch. Opinions about the beta content vary, but seem to generally fall within two camps: those that love what BioWare is doing with the Star Wars license and will be playing from day one, and those who feel a certain sense of ennui about traditional MMOs and think that SWTOR will be just another WoW clone with lightsabers.
Read more of Som Pourfarzaneh's Star Wars: The Old Republic - Swan Song for the Traditional MMO?
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Comments
SWtoR is going to sell a lot lot lot of boxes, but I think the subscriptions will be lacking. In 6 months to a year they will be going ftp.
Is it me or was that a lot of bias between the lines?
I agree that Swtor isn't revolutionizing the genre, but neither are the other games you mentioned. Yet those can get away with your praise of innovating in certain regards, yet it looks like you dismiss Swtor's innovations as something out of a lower league;
"SWTOR does try some new things with the cover system and fully-voiced storylines, but one could argue that its main draw is the highly polished use of the Star Wars license, not any gameplay innovations."
"Some new things with the cover system and fully-voiced storylines" ... really now?
Next to the WHOLE game being "voice-overed", not only storylines; so also flashpoints, normal quests, heroic quests, companion interaction, etc. ...
What about ...
Meaningful alignment and having a choice in conversations?
Social points?
A host of companions with stories of their own, romance options and who will sell stuff for you or craft and harvest, even when you are offline? (Adding an intersting management component).
Personal spaceships?
The sheer amount of content at launch compared to most releases of the past years?
Classes and advanced classes with a variety of roles to spec into and not being pigeonholed in one side of the trinity if you don't want to?
The ability to two man flashpoints with your companions?
A deep gear customization system and gear leveling a long with you, allowing you to keep the look you like best? (Without an artifiial appearance tab system next to it hopefully).
Being able to learn rare and improved crafting recipes by breaking items down again?
An open FFA pvp area?
A way to get pvp rewards through just world pvp by exchanging mercenary commendations for warzone commendations?
Exploring with stat increases as rewards?
Anyway, probably I'm forgetting a lot too.
Stil, like I said: SWTOR isn't revolutionizing the genre but I bet it's just as much innovating or improving the stuff that works in themeparks as the other upcoming releases.
They are all traditional mmorpgs, ... just improved ones (hopefully).
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everybody knows the game will sell alot, and like most mmorpg's loose people after the first few months. In my opinion i dont see the game going ftp, this has been a last ditch attempt to save the game for most of the mmorpgs that went from p2p to ftp. As long as the developers continue to bring out content with the same depth and quality then they should have no problems asking people to pay to play. At the end of the day £8.99 a month is alot less than buying a few xbox games every month. Plus mmorpgs dont end so you dont have to start a new character every time.
i played a few beta weekends and enjoyed every minute.
this is only my opinion and most likley this comment will get torn apart by people out there.
thanks for taking the time to read my opinion
I'll be playing SW:TOR but I've learned after Rift that underneath the hood of all those shiny graphics and whatnot is essentially the same core model that all MMOs follow. It's that part of the game that never seems to change, which is why MMO-hopping seems so rampant these days. Rift pushed out content, but then so does WoW... neither of which did a particular stellar job of trying to change the jello mold that has been in the fridge since Grandma first made one. Same-old same-old with a different coat of paint. I go into SW:TOR expecting the same, but for 30 days it will be a diversion and worth my time. After that, who knows. Rift lost me at max level because if I wanted to grind dungeons/raids ad nausem I would have continued to play WoW. I stopped playing WoW because the grind was more and more pointless with each patch they pushed. The notion of knowing that you WILL complete end game whether you actually try to or not has turned me off. It's become an absolute, not a possibility. Now the biggest challenge in that game is to avoid getting achievements... and that requires a lot of skill considering merely logging in awards you with some sort of award. I liked the game better when I knew only the best would ever clear the content before the nerfs rolled out. That it would be months before the content was cleared, not hours. SW:TOR is unlikely to fix that problem any more than Rift was able to do it. Does that make WoW better because it's been around longer? No, I blame WoW for the horrid direction ALL MMOs have gone as of late. MMOs are dying because they try too hard to become WoW... they want to make millions and they think the only way to do it is to replicate the formula in WoW. Well guess what, if it was so great, why are all these players trying out other MMOs? Take a hint, scrap WoW as a model, and start over. Completely over. Make a game that can't be completed in less than 2 weeks. Build it, and they will come.
I will be playing.
Not because it's Star Wars. Not because it's a Bioware game. Not because I hate World of Warcraft and believe that Blizzard is being managed by demons from hell.
I will be playing Star Wars: The Old Republic because it's new. I haven't played it.
If it continues to keep my interest beyond the first, free month, then I will subscribe. I will continue to subscribe until it fails to hold my interest. And then I will move on to the next, new game.
I couldn't care less about others' opinion of a game. I prefer to form my own.
There are a lot of people clamoring to play this game. I might give it a try in a year or so when they add more content. I just was not enamored with the game in the beta test. I just don't like all the handholding, it makes the game very unchallenging in my mind.
I wish those who do play it, lot's of fun.
More or less agree. I've always thought the game would break current sales records. Then by the end of the first year settle into the standard subscription numbers for a game.
F2P isn't really something I see happening. EA has never used F2P with an MMO... tho they have shut games down. I know people within EA have started to talk about F2P (there have been some public statements). However, they have also talked about that type of game being designed from the start.
Oh and having a game settle into the standard subscribtion number range does not = failed game. It just doesn't mean a game pulling in millions of concurrent subscriptions over the long term. The game is supposedly able to make a decent profit at 500,000 (even tho the vast majority of MMO's never hit that many subs... 450,000 used to be the high point for western MMO's right up till November '04).
As to the article I thought it was a bit strange. There are only a few variations from traditional MMO in TOR. They paid the price to have voice over through the entire game. This really is only an extension of what Funcome did with Age of Conan where you have voice through Tortage. Which goes back to the "voice packs" to enhance a game like Wing Commander.
The class story is just another quest branch... which one could argue is just a bit more evolved version of the DAoC class quests. They all had a story... and eventually lead to your armor set.
No upcoming MMO is vastly different than traditional MMO's either... something like The Secret World could be seen as a modified version of UO's skill set, SWG's skill set or even just a different twist on the "soul system" from Rift. Which all depends on whether you simply gain xp in the virtual world or get skill ups from using a certain weapon type etc
Everything old is new again... in other words.
I agree, pmiles, games need to take longer then 1 week to reach max level, anyways , one of the better aticles on this site in a long time, I truely think MMO's need to start progressing to be successful, combat needs to evolve , as does questing .
I like Star Wars as much as the next guy, but I can't help but feel like this game is set up to fail. Maybe I'm just jaded, but I'm not buying into it, yet.
I think SWToR has raised the bar for entering the market successfully as a subscription game. I don't think it's a Swan Song for the genre though. There's going to be another dry spell after GW2 and TSW release, but it won't die.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I kinda want to disagree on the 'lots of content' statement at the beginning of the article.
Depending on how fast you play, there's really only about 2 days to 2 months of content in the game right now.
It's all relative, of course, but if I - as a very casual gamer - was able to hit 15 in a weekend, playing at a normal pace, then reaching 50 isn't too far away..
Also, considering how there are zero down-time activities in the game, all you'll be doing is combat, combat and more combat, while your crew makes stuff for you. Well, if you're like me, you'll be trying to squeeze some roleplaying in there too. I'm not even going to get started on that issue though.
I willl be playing from launch, and probably a long time after that since I like Star Wars and story.
I find that all the other new MMO's that are comming out next year are all traditional MMORPG's that were just improved from the ones who came before them, and is in my opinion nothing ground breaking. For that to happen developers need to change up things in a big way.
I will not be playing SW:TOR for two reasons: First it is way to similar to WoW and second that I think it is going in the wrong direction by adding more single player elements to an MMORPG instead of adding more world persistant elements, which of it has almost nothing.
The game is really more an evolution of WoW rather than an evolution of the MMORPG genre. It is, from what I have read, seen and heard, a better version of WoW + SW IP. However as a persistant MMORPG world it has little to offer.
I really hope it would be the swan song of MMORPGs but unfourtunately as long as there is money to be made in creating these kind of themepark MMORPGs, and I am sure SW:TOR will make alot of money, then the guys in suits are going to continue funding these kind of games.
This is how capitalism works, it is not the best product that is the most successful but rather the best sold product which is neccessarily not the same thing. BetaMax for example was better from a technical point of view than VHS. This is an inherent weakness in capitalism but hopefully there will still be some publishers that are looking away from WoW. Namely games like ArcheAge. So the hope of MMORPGs may lie in the east rather than in the west where WoW clones seem to rule supreme.
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I will be be playing SW:TOR for two reasons: First it is not similar to WoW and second that I think it is going in the right direction by adding more personal storyline elements to an MMORPG as well as more world persistant elements, which of it has nice balance.
The game is really more an evolution of MMORPG's as well as evolution of the WOW. It is, from what I have read, seen , heard and played a better version of thempark MMOS. However as a persistant MMORPG world it has lot to offer.
I really hope it would be the swan song of MMORPGs and fourtunately as long as there is money to be made in creating these kind of themepark MMORPGs, and I am sure SW:TOR will make alot of money, then the guys in suits are going to continue funding these kind of games. And Thank God for that
This is how business works, it is the best product that is the most successful because selling product only can help till buyer actually tries it. Even though BetaMax for example was better from a technical point of view than VHS. It recorded one hour of video per tape. JVC came out shortly after with VHS, and it initially supported two hours per tape. This keyed into the second win for VHS -- rentals. A single VHS tape could hold a whole movie, while you needed two tapes for Betamax.
This is an inherent strong point in consumerism, ease of use and adaptability with minimum drawback and hopefully there will still be more publishers that will continue to make more fun games like SWTOR and lesser the tedium like Betamax.. So the hope of MMORPGs may lie in the west rather than in the east where grindfest clones seem to rule supreme.
How many servers SWTOR will launch with on release?
ShredderSE - Umm how many do they need? Maybe 6.
US, EU, Asian, France, German and Russian.
Subs will be so low there is no need for more
Snoocky-How many servers?
The first 3 months a lot...after that 2 i guess, one for PVE and 1 for PVP...
Thorbrand - SWTOR doesn't have longevity at all. Might be one of the shortest lived MMOs.
If I'm really lucky I'll be playing as soon as tommorrow and yes, very likely be staying with the game for quite some time. How long? Who knows. It entirely depends on how much content Bioware puts out after market and how long it takes me to get through all 8 stories in the meantime. It took me with some serious lost sleep and some quite frankly much more time then I normally would play 4 weekends to get my main to 32. Thats of course with a number of alt jaunts .. now thats playing an insane (for me...) 14 hours a day on those weekends (yay for mon-fri job) and its unlikely I will be doing that after live. More like 2-3 a day, and then I will be splitting my time between agent and inquisitor since I can't really decide which I enjoy playing more.
I should point out somewhat in response to Korvass that I think 1-15 in a beta weekend was pretty average but believe me when I say that leveling post 20 slows down conciderably and I found myself having to grind pretty hard to hit the beta milestones I wanted to achieve (those being starship, vehicle, darkside 3, and second companion besides ship droid).. which I did but I bypassed alot of content to do it and if your like me, a completionist .. I actually felt bad skipping so much just to power level.
Everyone levels at thier own pace of course but I really believe anyone who power levels or rushes through this game just to get to end game is sorely missing out on what the games best presentation points are.. the story and feel. People say SWTOR isn't much new.. but for me I disagree.. its a quantum leap in the right direction of what MMORPGs are meant to be in the first place... because all to often we focus on the MMO .. and forget the RPG.. which I think SWTOR simply oozes.
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Online games could be in general been categorised in three flavors: storyline, sandbox and multiplayer. Examples: For the first WoW, Lotro, SWTOR ; the second EVE online, Perpetuum online; the third has become a standard with any decent game, specially if it is a FPS.
One could debate what a feature/game-mechanic needs to be, to be called "new". And still not be the wiser. I did not see anything revolutionary during my brief Beta on TOR. The game could be compared with WoW, RIFT, Lotro. With or without actors lending voices to enact what I can read does not change much in my book.
And the story ?It is story driven, and you could demand to have more "freedom", the ones we had with the "Elder Scrolls" series. It does not bother me. Games being after all illusions in their own right. But perhaps some level-addicts will start demanding "something todo" after the levelcap.
The only thing "new" is the huge amount of media and general "hype", which quite frankly is getting on my nerve.
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Wow, yeah, they seem to have overlooked a few innovations, such as the cover system, full voice-over, and the others that you mentioned, in their summary of mostly more of the same.
Well said, Dark Pony. I played the beta (though my girlfriend managed to keep me from getting far) and I was still surprised at how many things you listed that I just hadn't considered. Very little innovation, indeed. You don't always have to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes it's enough to change it from wood to rubber.
Currently playing:
Rift
Played:
SWToR, Aion,EQ, Dark Age of Camelot
World of Warcraft, AoC
Everyone keeps talking about these EQ clones. I wish there was an updated EQ1 clone. These games actually aren't like EQ1 much at all.
SWTOR definitely doesn't look like the end all be all of MMO's. However, I do kind of wonder what all of these people are going to do that pass on this game? I can't think of another MMO that's really worth anything currently. At least this is Star Wars (not dwarves and elves) and it's new.
Not sure I get this complaint about how SWTOR is of the same mold as WoW/etc. It's a MMORPG. They're made from the MMORPG mold. If you do not like MMORPG's, then you will not like this game. "Sidequests similar to other MMO'S"... Of COURSE they are similar. How do you make them different? That's like asking for first person shooter action in a text based game. Aside from the graphical improvements, these MMORPG's are based on the old MUD's of the early 1990's. Even "eve" is fairly standard faire when you realize your SHIP is your character. Everyone looks alike, the quests are routine, yadda yadda yadda. All that doesn't matter. At the end of the day, its whether people find the game FUN to play. I found SWTOR to be fun to play.
So, all you people who complain about this game being a clone of the others, please describe your perfect MMORPG and how you would make it "Different".
Every time i see people list their perfect game it always seems to boil down to their first game with updated graphics. Not "new".
the only other "new" thing I actually see is a push fore more fps style combat. Not sure if that is because more fps players are playing mmo's or if this is coming from the traditional mmo demographic.
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Well, the thread turned the usual direction. It's almost a reflex now.
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LoL... I just read this article and the whole thread. I find it hilarious that people argue about SWTOR as if it is a clone of WoW or that it's the Savior for MMORPGS. For me it's neither. What I like it for is that it combines scifi with mystical.
Just like any SCIFI-FANTASY novel, I'm able to experience both the mystical and technilogical side of my storyline. That's what make's SWTOR special to me. I got pretty tired of elves, orcs, swords and daggers, blah, blah and double blah. This game tickles my fantasy that there's more in the universe than what's in the lore that is derived from our planet.
The game mechanics for ALL MMORPG's are pretty much the same. I played wow for 5 years and I haven't, nor will I even consider that SWTOR is a WoW clone. For one, WoW is based off of a lessor graphic model than SWTOR. For two, WoW's content is completely repetative to include the NPCs that are in the game from level 1 to 80. (then of course there's the whole PANDA aspect.) I could continue on a long list of reasons that SWTOR is different, but I believe that would be a pretty redundant point by now.
I agree with those who will be playing SWTOR just for fun. The eyecandy of this game and any other game is great, but I've been happy to pay $14.99 a month + whatever expansions come out for many MMORPG's all based on fun and story.
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This is strikes me as a not-well-thought-out and obviously biased question. Specially since the game is only about to be released. The same question has been asked about every other MMO about to launch, "Will WAR finish WoW?" "Will Rift take MMOs out of business?" "Will Darkfall be the king" and other such a question are, IMO, stupid. The MMO market is so big that no one game will manage to single-handedly change the arena. Each game can have its niche of players and the masses will continue to game-hop to whatever new gig is in town. A more meaningful analysis would be to give subscription numbers 6 or 12 months from release.