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The Soapbox: In praise of SWTOR's 12X experience
It's taken 12 times the normal XP rate, but Star Wars: The Old Republic is finally my main MMO (at least for another week or so). Well, OK, it's also taken a series of spectacularly ill-considered decisions by XLGAMES and Trion, but that's a rant for another day. I've been playing SWTOR quite a lot over the past month since BioWare's subscriber-only pre-expansion boost has cut all of the godawful grindpark garbage right out of a galaxy far, far away. Too bad it's just a temporary fix, though -- here's hoping that the devs give veterans the option of keeping the XP bonus long after December 1st.
I saw a real Jedi in Star Wars: The Old Republic
Let me tell you about this Jedi Guardian named Nayelii. She lives on Star Wars: The Old Republic's Ebon Hawk server. She could actually be a he, but the avatar (and the name) seemed female, so that's the pronoun I'm going with at the moment. I say "seemed" because Nayelii was wearing hooded robes, it's fairly dark through most of the Kuat Drive Yards flashpoint, and I tend to play dungeons with my camera at max range. Anyway, that's all beside the point because last weekend Nayelii put on what is unequivocally the best tanking performance I've seen in all my years playing MMORPGs.
Some Assembly Required: Conflating story content and MMORPGs
A few weeks ago I poked fun at ArenaNet and its "living story" nonsense. As you might imagine, plenty of comments ensued, and I'd like to highlight one of them as a point of further discussion this week. Skoryy wrote (in part): "Since when did enjoying content, especially story content, actively require skill? Any literate person can read a book; why do I also need to know how to be a master crafter or master warrior or master whatever to get to enjoy the game's true content?" For further context, this was a response to the line of thinking that says successful games like baseball, chess, and RISK are not linear dev-driven content treadmills but rather a set of rules that result in endless permutations of player-generated content. When I first read the remark I was taken aback. I mean, really, my initial response to the "since when" bit was "since you decided to play an interactive video game instead of read a book!" And that's still true to a large extent. As I thought about the overall discussion, though, I sympathized with his perspective even though I think it's terrible that some MMO companies are hell-bent on conflating the definition of game with the definition of story.
Second Wind: The Old Republic at the 15-month mark
A long time ago, I previewed Star Wars: The Old Republic. It was a beta build, and a limited press preview to boot, so it's fair to say that I didn't have the full measure of BioWare's latest Star Wars opus. Even so, it exceeded my expectations in some respects, and despite the reams of hate fan mail I received for being Massively's leering, anti-SWTOR Sith villain, the truth of the matter is that I love Star Wars and video games to such a degree that it's impossible to stay away from any product that marries them. I own Super Bombad Racing, for funk's sake.
The Soapbox: Adding story to SWTOR
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. I'd like to take a few moments this week to prognosticate about story in The Old Republic. I'm not talking about the story that's already there, mind you, as I've barely scratched the surface (a 20 Sage, a 15 Gunslinger, and a beta-flavored Trooper are the extent of my experience thus far). No, what I'm more interested in talking about is what's going to happen story-wise when I get to level 50 on one of these guys. The easy answer is, of course, roll an alt! There are seven other classes after all, each reportedly featuring 200 hours worth of single-player story content. What happens if I were to get to level 50 on all eight classes, though? Is The Old Republic's gameplay still going to revolve around the heavily hyped story angle at that point?
A certain point of view: Jef's hands-on with SWTOR's beta
Hey Star Wars fans, what say we recap my recent beta experiences in The Old Republic? I know what you're thinking (because it's the same thing I thought after BioWare's marketing folks sent along an unsolicited invitation): Here comes a giant anti-themepark rant and zomgwtf call someone who cares! Surprisingly though, I had a decent time. I managed to get a Republic Trooper off the Ord Mantell starter planet and firmly entrenched in a few Coruscant quest lines, and I logged over 10 hours of gameplay in the process (in the comfort of my own home, mind you, and not under the watchful eye of a PR droid at a convention). To be frank, TOR's not half bad. It's had a lot of money thrown at it, there's a ton of what passes for modern-day MMO content, and if you're into that sort of thing, you'll no doubt enjoy yourself for a time.
The Soapbox: Why MMO combat sucks, and how BioWare could've made it suck less
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. I hate MMORPG combat. It's not because I'm a carebear. It's not because I'm bad at it. It's not because I dislike parsing, being a min/maxer, or solving equations and comparing spreadsheets when I'm supposed to be having fun. OK, maybe it is because of those last four things. Mainly, though, it's because MMORPG combat completely and unequivocally sucks. MMORPG combat is not combat. It's high school math. And it's the same in every damn MMORPG. Twenty years into the genre here, guys, aren't we ready to grow up even a little bit?
The Soapbox: A case for player-generated content (or why MMO story is complete and utter bollocks)
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. I read with great interest Ragnar Tornquist's recent blog posting concerning story in The Secret World. After I got over the initial impulse to roll my eyes at yet another developer jumping on the BioWare-induced story, story, story bandwagon, I found that Tornquist had a couple of interesting points to make. Unfortunately, he also missed an opportunity to strike a blow in favor of player-generated story content. While this is totally unsurprising coming from a man who has built his career on interactive storytelling prowess, it was nonetheless disappointing on several levels. Yes, yes, I know, Tornquist is a wunderkind developer, you'd have his babies, and who am I to question his almighty design wisdom? Regardless, I am questioning portions of this particular blog piece, because MMOs are an exceedingly inadequate vehicle for storytelling of the kind that developers are espousing lately. That's not to say massively multiplayer titles shouldn't have a narrative component, though. Join me after the cut to find out why MMO makers ought to stick to systems and math and leave the storytelling to the folks who do it best.
GDC 2011: BioWare's Damion Schubert on designing for loners
Nothing stirs up a good MMO debate like the age-old question of whether or not the genre should cater to solo players. BioWare's Damion Schubert, lead systems designer on the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic, recently added a bit of fuel to that particular fire during a presentation at last week's GDC in San Francisco. Schubert's talk focused on loners in the massively multiplayer space, and while it's no surprise to anyone that TOR is being built with the solo player in mind, it may come as a bit of a revelation that BioWare isn't aiming to "dumb down" the MMORPG as some fans have suggested. On the contrary, Schubert states that MMOs feature "hardcore stuff. This is hardcore gameplay, and we have to figure out how to get the solo player in a position where they want to take part in this, where they feel comfortable with the social circles, where they feel like they can be contributors."
The Soapbox: Episode II - A New Hype
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect that of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. Well golly, I think it's time for a bit of contrarian opinion regarding The Old Republic. I know, I know, I don't write about TOR aside from the occasional news post, but here is one of the many joys of Massively (and more specifically, the Soapbox). We all play a lot of games and have pretty strong opinions about them regardless of whether or not they're our bread and butter. So, while my day job consists of covering sword and sorcery titles for our fine website, it's hard to get away from the oncoming repulsorlift hype train that is The Old Republic. Several months back, I wrote a Daily Grind in which I basically said that all the hoopla surrounding the game was getting tiresome. Predictably, crucifixion by comments ensued, all for daring to question the supremacy of both BioWare and Star Wars. The fact that a minority opinion generated so much rancor (yeah, I went there) got me to thinking about TOR, BioWare, and the unrestrained optimism that often characterizes MMO fandom in general. On a purely personal level, my fire has gone out of the Star Wars universe, the fandom is all but extinct, a couple of posters and a model X-Wing are all that's left of my former religion. Can BioWare rekindle that fire? Do I even want it to? Make point five past the lightspeed jump for more.
