story-telling
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What WoW's story could learn from Diablo III (and vice versa)
I like the Diablo storyline. It's complex without being incomprehensible, and unlike WoW, it doesn't have a gigantic and sometimes daunting pile of backstory to wade through. You can pretty much jump into Diablo III without having played any of the prior games and still have a pretty good idea of what's going on. The world, Sanctuary, has a fairly simple premise, but the repercussions of its creation have far-reaching effects that are more often than not a gigantic pain in the butt for those living on Sanctuary. I liked Diablo III. I liked the gameplay -- who doesn't like carving their way through hordes of demon corpses? I liked the controls, which were relatively simplistic, and I liked the talent trees, which were fun without being confusing. It's hard to compare WoW and Diablo, because the two games are so very different in concept. One's an MMO, the other is a click-fest of looting and gore. But they both have one thing in common: story. And oddly enough, it seems as though there are a few things these two games could learn from each other on that front. Please note: There are spoilers for Diablo III in this post. If you haven't finished playing through to the end and you wish to avoid spoilers, turn away!
Behind the Mask: A long, slow, rumbling
One of the things I absolutely hate about comics is waiting. When I read Detective Comics regularly, I used to patiently wait while re-reading my old issues, wondering what was going to happen to Batman next. Eventually, I got into manga a little bit and was totally spoiled by the graphic novel format. Now I only read comics (or novel series) if I can get an entire plot arc in one shot. I hate waiting. Heck, I prefer to watch an entire TV season on Netflix instead of waiting for each episode to get released. Unsurprisingly, I played through the first three issues of Aftershock, Champions Online's new comic series, before I decided I was irritated with waiting every week for the latest issue. I was sort of put off by bugs in the first issue of the series, and I decided that waiting for the final release would give the devs time to polish out the bugs. New content is new content after all, and when it's released weekly, it doesn't get a lot of time on PTS before it gets pushed to live. Issue #6, The King is Dead, was released a few weeks ago, and the devs have put the finishing touches on Aftershock. How does it match up with the rest of CO's content?
SDCC 2010: A SWTOR Managing Editor who doesn't solve problems by killing all the kittens
We all know that know that story is the fourth pillar for The Old Republic. We also know BioWare has the reputation for having some of the most compelling stories in the gaming industry. In fact, story is written into its mission statement: "BioWare's vision is to deliver the best story-driven games in the world." So it is no surprise at all that when the team came to Comic-Con this past weekend, it consisted of mostly writers. Massively's Dan O'Halloran nabbed the Managing Editor on SWTOR, Alexander Freed, for a conversation. Freed has scribed much of the story and dialogue for this epic MMO, as well as been the writer for the exciting adventures of Teneb Kel in The Blood of the Empire webcomic. Continue on after the break to catch Alexander Freed's insight into what the different types of quests will be available in SWTOR, what compelling choices players have to make, and what it takes to write for a project of this magnitude.
