Hyperspace Beacon: Rule of many
It feels a bit meta to respond to my own column, but my last article caused quite a stir. I would be vainglorious to believe that my point of view is the only one or that it is the best one. Given the 68 responses to my article in the comments section here and over 17 pages on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic forum -- at least half of which completely disagreed with me -- I would be ignorant to believe that there is room for only one approach to the subject. On top of that, Principal Lead Combat Designer Georg Zoeller offered a compelling argument that counters my stance in a completely unrelated thread.
In this issue of the Hyperspace Beacon, I'm going to give voice to the opposition. I would hope that everyone who responded to the last article wants SWTOR to succeed as much as I do. (I realize that what I said previously could be construed as not wanting this game to be great, but that's untrue. I want the game to be the best it can be.) Many of the comments I received can be categorized together, so following the break, I will summarize the other positions. Let's see how SWTOR is keeping the MMO in the MMORPG.
Why in the world would the inconvenience of having a bank in a city enhance social interaction in an MMORPG? In fact, why would we want to do any of the menial tasks like selling grays, visiting the auction house, or unloading our inventories to our banks anywhere but in our private instances? Many commenters noted that they never met any of their current guildies at the bank. Zoeller said it best in the post mentioned earlier: "Players have no incentive to interact with other players when selling grays. You're just forcing them to return to a hub. There are better reasons (e.g., trainers, turning in quests, etc.) that reward the player for doing the same thing, which creates a much more positive attitude to begin with."
He goes on to mention that there are other positive reasons that a player would visit a hub: vendors, trainers, quests, and meeting friends. He sets aside spaceport access, medical centers, and speeder transportation as merely neutral reasons to visit hubs. With everything in Star Wars: The Old Republic, features such as bank location and vendoring trash have been re-examined to see whether they still make sense as MMO conventions within the current game design, and the design team has decided that these features really served no purpose other than to inconvenience the players. As Zoeller said, "Frankly -- nobody has ever told me 'Man, I went to town to sell grays, it was soooo awesome!'" The same can be said for a trip to the bank.
World of Warcraft has set the precedent for MMOs for years. It is impossible to make an MMO today without comparing it to this standard. At the DICE summit in Las Vegas a couple of weeks back, BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk even called WoW a "touchstone", going so far as to say that "[i]t has established standards, it's established how you play an MMO. Every MMO that comes out, I play and look at it. And if they break any of the WoW rules, in my book that's pretty dumb." Although some gamers chose to misinterpret the statement, there are truths to what he said. The Old Republic will be compared to WoW -- not just by Dr. Zeschuk but by everyone.
When my article stated that removing the need to group while leveling was helping to remove the MMO from the MMORPG, a multitude of people replied the same way Calgamer did on the official SWTOR forums: "I'm not sure how that's any different from other MMOs. Go start a new character in WoW and tell me if there is at any time a need to group while leveling." As everyone knows, WoW is the most successful Western MMO ever, and for a new game to deviate from WoW's formula could very well be catastrophic. (Seriously, there is no sarcasm in that statement.) The MMOs that have changed the formula have, generally, failed or have had only moderate success. In order to justify the money spent (well spent, in my opinion), SWTOR cannot be just a moderate success; it has to be a great success.
The final and most compelling argument is simply that BioWare has not explained the whole game to us. As JediMasterRyanW on the official forums suggested, "I think that Flashpoints, Raids, Open PvP, Warzones, and hopefully Cantinas [...] with sabaac, pazaak, dejarik, etc. will be enough incentive to make people socialize, even though they don't technically have to." If it is true that this game will contain competitive minigames like Star Wars-themed card and board games, then I believe that would be a rewarding enough experience to thwart the demon of apathy. Players would not only have a reason to step out of their holes to actually interact with others but also get a reward for doing so.
I certainly do not know everything that will be in The Old Republic, and neither do the posters who disagreed with the prior Hyperspace Beacon. Do you still believe there is a social element to the game? What do you think the game will have that will reward our being social? If you still think that the game is taking the MMO out of the MMORPG, what can be added to the game that may help you change your mind?
The Hyperspace Beacon by Larry Everett is your weekly guide to the vast galaxy of Star Wars: The Old Republic, currently in production by BioWare. If you have comments or suggestions for the column, send a transmission to larry@massively.com. Now strap yourself in, kid -- we gotta make the jump to hyperspace!
