This is what is wrong with The Old Republic

[Shakermaker]

The mindset of Bioware. They are calling their newest TOR vid a 'multiplayer demo'. Riiiight. I'd assume it would have been multiplayer SINCE IT'S AN MMO!

Seriously though, I don't see how they will make it work. Bioware is a company that makes great singleplayer games, but multiplayer is a different ballgame, especially mmo's.

 

[Bad^Hat]

They called it multiplayer because they're trying to bring the single player experience with dialogue and branching plot points and whatnot, which is, for the most part, what they've been highlighting in videos so far. As for the gameplay, looks pretty standard for an MMO, I honestly didn't spot anything wrong with it.

Honestly, their biggest enemy is going to be hype. Some people seem to be expecting them to completely overhaul the MMO formula, but I don't see that happening at all any time soon, let alone from Bioware who are still new to this. I doubt even Blizzard will stray far from the mold with their new IP.

 

[TwwIX]

I don't see what the problem is. Gameplay still looks the same as it does in the singe players games.
From what i have read and seen so far, it has everything what the singleplayer games had in addition to multiplayer. You now will get to play with actual people instead of AI team mates.

What exactly is wrong with that?

 

[morgs]

Looks good to me?

 

[Sedako]

Shaker, you do realize that 'demo' means demonstration, right? The are simply demonstrating the multi-player aspect of the game.

 

[Shakermaker]

Shaker, you do realize that 'demo' means demonstration, right? The are simply demonstrating the multi-player aspect of the game.

Yeah, and that exactly struck me as odd. There is no singleplayer in a MMO. Even in the noobie zones of EQ, WoW and every other mumorpeger you can easily team up and start questing together. That is no feature, that is simply how the genre works. Almost everyone who has ever played a MMO, has had the experience of getting in trouble and being saved by a complete stranger who just happened to pass along. That is one of the main draws of the genre (for me at least): the randomness of meeting people while adventuring. The Old Republic to me seems like a glorified singleplayer game that just happens to have a couple of multiplayer features. I am guessing it will be heavily instanced in order to make the story parts work. My bet is that TOR will be a great story heavy co-op rpg, but not a MMO.

 

[morgs]

Age of conan had single player aspects, which helped develop your character and progress the story. And don't tell me that those aspects were bad.

 

[Vegeta897]

There is no singleplayer in a MMO.

I've never played, but isn't the first part of Guildwars SP?

 

[Shakermaker]

Age of conan had single player aspects, which helped develop your character and progress the story. And don't tell me that those aspects were bad.

Yes, you're right. Conan was originally designed to have the first 20 levels played as a singleplayer game. They toned that down to 5 levels iirc, so basically only the tutorial was played alone.

I've never played, but isn't the first part of Guildwars SP?

Most of Guild Wars is instanced for a group of 5 players max (or 6, can't remember). Only big cities are properly massively multiplayer, but they're basically nothing more than gaming lobbies.

 

[Eejit]

Yes, you're right. Conan was originally designed to have the first 20 levels played as a singleplayer game. They toned that down to 5 levels iirc, so basically only the tutorial was played alone.

At levels 5-20 half the quests were "daytime" multiplayer while "nighttime" had single-player quests essential to leaving the starting island and reaching the main multiplayer part of the game.

 

[Bad^Hat]

Yeah, and that exactly struck me as odd. There is no singleplayer in a MMO. Even in the noobie zones of EQ, WoW and every other mumorpeger you can easily team up and start questing together. That is no feature, that is simply how the genre works. Almost everyone who has ever played a MMO, has had the experience of getting in trouble and being saved by a complete stranger who just happened to pass along. That is one of the main draws of the genre (for me at least): the randomness of meeting people while adventuring. The Old Republic to me seems like a glorified singleplayer game that just happens to have a couple of multiplayer features. I am guessing it will be heavily instanced in order to make the story parts work. My bet is that TOR will be a great story heavy co-op rpg, but not a MMO.

From what I've seen, yeah, it's heavily instanced. It's probably going to be an MMO more in the vein of Guild Wars than something like WoW or EQ, but there's nothing inherently wrong with that. Actually, it's probably just a byproduct of the fact that they're trying to focus on properly plotted and voiced quests rather than the standard textbox format. As long as it's a good game, what's to complain about?

 

[Shakermaker]

From what I've seen, yeah, it's heavily instanced. It's probably going to be an MMO more in the vein of Guild Wars than something like WoW or EQ, but there's nothing inherently wrong with that. Actually, it's probably just a byproduct of the fact that they're trying to focus on properly plotted and voiced quests rather than the standard textbox format. As long as it's a good game, what's to complain about?

I didn't like Guild Wars either (or any heavily instanced MMO for that matter).

And don't get me wrong, I think it will probably be a good game, but like I wrote:

My bet is that TOR will be a great story heavy co-op rpg, but not a MMO.

 

[TwwIX]

They have yet to announce their business model and beta hasn't even started yet.
If EA pulls another APB, start raging then.

Also, there's nothing wrong with instances if it they are properly implemented. City of Heroes did it well along with Age of Conan and Guild Wars.

 

[Shakermaker]

OK, I'll repeat it for a third time: I don't like the MMO model Guild Wars and (to a lesser extent) Conan use. I'll also tell you why. In a regular server model a community grows organically. People meet while playing. When leveling up there is high chance of you running into the same players while questing. Bonds develop, guilds / clans are founded, etc. In the instanced model Guild Wars has (City of Heroes and Star Trek also come to mind), there is a slighter chance of meeting the same people because you don't have a regular server. You might get a regular instance of a capital city, but when questing you're in your own little world and there is no one else there unless you invited them beforehand. I don't like that.

 

[TwwIX]

I had no issues creating bonds and making friends in any of the games that you have mentioned.
Including Champions Online and Star Trek Online even though i barely touched those games because they bore the **** out of me. City of Heroes has a nice balance of open world and instanced missions. So, i don't know what you are talking about. As for Guild Wars, well it's not really an MMO nor was anybody under the impressions that it was. Even the devs of it never labeled it as such.
I don't see how anybody can dislike instanced missions and instead prefer kill stealing and ganking that's present in so many open world MMO's.

Again, we still don't know much about the game or how heavily instanced it will. So far, we have only seen tidbits of the classes and a few combat videos. For all we know, they might add separate servers for role playing and open pvp oriented players.

 

[TwwIX]

Here you go.

http://www.tentonhammer.com/events/e3/2010/swtor-ohlen-interview

A short but informative interview.

 

[Paulaner]

From what i have read and seen so far, it has everything what the singleplayer games had in addition to multiplayer. You now will get to play with actual people instead of AI team mates.

In my opinion, the singleplayer experience is something that simply cannot be reproduced in MMOs. It's not a simple matter of "you play with real people instead of AI". Good singleplayer games have carefully crafted stories, pace, progession, characters and situations.
In MMOs, most of these elements are left to what players do. And most of the times, players suck.

I keep SP games and MMOs in two distinct, separate, not overlapping groups.

 

[TwwIX]

In my opinion, the singleplayer experience is something that simply cannot be reproduced in MMOs. It's not a simple matter of "you play with real people instead of AI". Good singleplayer games have carefully crafted stories, pace, progession, characters and situations.
In MMOs, most of these elements are left to what players do. And most of the times, players suck.

I keep SP games and MMOs in two distinct, separate, not overlapping groups.

Age of Conan and LOTRO managed to do all those things and still remain a open world MMO.

Read the interview, by the way.

 

[Shakermaker]

Here you go.

http://www.tentonhammer.com/events/e3/2010/swtor-ohlen-interview

A short but informative interview.

From that interview:

These worlds are huge public spaces. When you go to the world of Coruscant or Tatooine, you’re going to have a huge world to explore with many square kilometers and it is all public space. You’re going to see all the other players that are part of your shard running around doing their thing, and there are phases within a world and those phases are often where class events take place, but that’s a very small percentage of the space. It’s not a heavily instanced game. We are using instances, which we’re calling phasing, to do a lot of our storytelling, but it’s a massively multiplayer game. That’s what people are signing up for and that’s what we’re giving them.

That is good news. Now lets hope that they will deliver.

 

[Jintor]

The fact that they are trying to do something interesting and new within the MMO space is not automatic grounds for omg ruined forever (although it does raise the possibility of omg thissucks somewhat).