the-fourth-pillar
Latest
Hyperspace Beacon: The crew skills story
Forgive my fanboy-ism a bit, please. Update 1.2: Legacy excites me. My friends on the Star Wars: The Old Republic live server wonder where I've got off to since the patch hit the test server. Not to worry, guys. I'm still in game; I'm just playing with the new UI and character builds. We know that the major part of this update is the Legacy system. In a system that is rarely seen across MMOs, BioWare has created a tangible connection between alts. Now, Aaron Shaddoe can be the brother of Maacus Shaddoe and the son of Ryctur Shaddoe, and the game will reward me for doing that. Aaron could be a Smuggler, Maacus a Jedi Consular, and Ryctur a Bounty Hunter, all with interconnecting abilities between them. It's an interesting concept, but I'm curious how many people are going to seriously use it for its intended purpose. Update 1.2 holds a couple of other changes that interest me more -- namely, crew skills and story content. Lead Combat Designer Georg Zoeller and Writer Charles Boyd spoke about the changes to crew skills and the story update in two developer blogs last week. And despite the legacy system's being the biggest part of this update, it's these two areas that will impact the greater game. [Warning: Some minor spoilers are contained within. It's been three months, so I hope they are not spoilers any more, but I should warn you just in case.]
The Soapbox: The inevitable Mass Effect MMO
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 don't know about you, but I've yet to play Mass Effect 3. This is not by choice, mind you, and now that I've returned from the wilds of last week's GDC, it's time to settle in for another 30-hour tour with Shepard and company. What does this have to do with MMOs? Well, nothing really, except that BioWare hasn't exactly closed the door on a Mass Effect title. On the contrary, the company's dynamic doctor duo have hinted at the fact that this, ahem, theoretical game would need to be somewhat different from the firm's maiden MMO voyage. At this point I think an ME MMO is inevitable, so join me after the cut to discuss whether BioWare can really break the mold with its second effort as well as what that effort could look like.
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.
