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On the plus side, once you are on many of these worlds, there are no loading screens. This was one thing I absolutely hated about Star Trek Online and it is like a breath of fresh air in TOR for me.
*****Official Star Wars: The Old Republic Thread*****
- Thread starter CaptainRAVE
- Start date
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The more I read about this the more I'm getting put off. KOTOR I and II were the best games I've ever played which I can put entirely down to the excellent storylines and interesting NPCs. It was all about exploring and discovering cool stuff, a very individual thing as you play it the way that you enjoy it, not to be competitive or even to achieve objectives. I don't have a clue about 'raiding' and other stuff, and frankly I'm not interested. I want a continuation of the KOTOR series, continuing the storyline, discovering cool stuff and generally playing in a laid back cinematic manner. Not some WoW SW reskin. AFAIK, this has no relation to KOTOR in any way apart from name.
I think people are getting carried away a little with their outcrys about "world servers", it totally depends how it will be done. I played Aion for a long time with channels and I've never noticed any problem with it, and that's because it's only in the non-pvp zones. People might be expecting something like GW, but that wouldn't be the case. In Aion you had channels in pure pve maps so that quest mobs/areas don't get over crowded and people can complete them without frustration. Any maps with both factions were just one channel. Let's remember mmo's these days rarely have full pvp, so it's not like you can kill your own faction to get quest mobs/items, therefore a balanced population needs to be achieved for what's available. It's not like they're going to make huge maps to accomadate for 1000s of people playing in one zone when it launches. They may even just do what some MMOs do and have only the starting area with channels, so people don't bottleneck at launch. WoW is a tough one to explain, I played from the beginning but can't actually remember how packed starting areas were. I'm guessing the mixture of fast leveling (0-20 was like a few hours), many servers and gradual build to popularity accomodated for their lack of channels, but who knows. Furthermore many mmo's use adaptive channels, so if there weren't many online you might have 2 channels for a zone, or 7 if it's a Sunday afternoon, keeping areas populated but not crazy numbers. We'll have to see what they impliment, personally I like big crowds, and love the feeling of crazy numbers enjoying the start of a new MMO, but I also see how it needs to be balanced.
Soldato
I don't buy the technical / balance reasons. If you're worried about spawn times, implement a spawn rate that's dependant on the number of players in the area. That can often make things even more fun, as when you're sent to kill those ten rats you find there's a small army of players battling a massive rat invasion.
The biggest buzz in any mmo is walking out into a public area and to see it seething with players. It lets you know you're in a living world with everyone else. I don't want the illusion that I'm the centre of the world story. It's an mmo, I know I'm not, and trying to give me the impression I am just breaks the whole thing.
Walking out of Coronet space port to see a few hundred players all crammed into the square, huge pets everywhere, speeders zipping through it all, buffers, entertainers, people duelling. The lag could be awful, but I really didn't care, it was just amazing.
The biggest buzz in any mmo is walking out into a public area and to see it seething with players. It lets you know you're in a living world with everyone else. I don't want the illusion that I'm the centre of the world story. It's an mmo, I know I'm not, and trying to give me the impression I am just breaks the whole thing.
Walking out of Coronet space port to see a few hundred players all crammed into the square, huge pets everywhere, speeders zipping through it all, buffers, entertainers, people duelling. The lag could be awful, but I really didn't care, it was just amazing.
Hmm ok, well that caught my attention.
Oh dear god i do hope this is a beta specific thing.
4 years i've been waiting and this will single handedly stop me from buying and playing this game.
Seems to be a very modern thing, UO, Daoc, AC, EQ, WoW and so on and so on never bothered with instancing versions of zones to deal with their populations. Its a shame imo that as the technology of MMOs and bandwidths has advanced the actual MM factor seems to have decreased with more and more artifical division of players.
Its almost the difference between going to a concert or stadium and there being 50,000 people and you get jostled and bumped into from time to time but the awe and atmosphere which comes with that, and going to the concert or stadium and there are 500 people. No bumping, no queuing, no jostling, but the awe and atmosphere is vastly reduced.
Soldato
If planets are indeed going to be instanced, then this fails.
I understand what you're saying but again it depends how it's done. You're saying that everyone should be together, but how many MMOs of this type don't have other servers? Surely having more than 1 server reduces the effect you're talking about? It's no different than zone servers. Just because there's other channels doesn't mean there will be a handful of people, you're still gonna get 100s of people in one area, this is one of the most popular MMOs of it's time. Also you talk about realism, when in star wars have you seen 20 jedi's fighting a few rats as you put it? Or anything other than an army or sith? It would look supid.
Soldato
I never mentioned realism?! Kill-ten-rats is an mmo meme at this stage, hence the reference. Replace 'flesh raiders' with rats if it's too literal for you.
I agree it's all about the numbers. I don't mind if it's instanced TOO much, if I'm still seeing crowds. But it does dilute the population, and destroys community if everyone on the server has a chance of being invisible to others.
Take that guy in City of Heroes who used to stand in front of a phone booth and RP phone conversations with his mother. He was a sodding legend on the server, crowds would gather. That could never happen in an in instanced city because three quarters of the population would never see the guy. I still think it's just lazy programming.
I agree it's all about the numbers. I don't mind if it's instanced TOO much, if I'm still seeing crowds. But it does dilute the population, and destroys community if everyone on the server has a chance of being invisible to others.
Take that guy in City of Heroes who used to stand in front of a phone booth and RP phone conversations with his mother. He was a sodding legend on the server, crowds would gather. That could never happen in an in instanced city because three quarters of the population would never see the guy. I still think it's just lazy programming.
Soldato
Speaking with a friend about this I think it's the mmo genre changing. They were once a niche, sidelined Market with a dedicated playerbase who knew what they wanted and were listened to so the games hit their target audience. Now the big boys of the dev Market have realised what a cash cow the Market can be and are now mass producing as cheap as possible to a wider Market, a wider Market who are not bothered as much about the mmo side of things as they purples, epeen and treating the game like a cod game (play for 15mins and still achieve a lot) for all blizzards faults with wow it was activison who stuck the knife really in and warped the old game.
I hope and pray mmo's suffer a mass burnout and the new "fans" move on to the next fad then the genre can go back to good games with dev's who design to fill their players wants. If this does happen it will be a looooooong time away though.
Soldato
I dunno, I think we started to see the beginning of it with Rift. Very polished, very enjoyable, but still very much a solo-through-it-here's-some-epic-gear-and-a-pat-on-the-back type game.
And a lot of people played it, said "Yeah, it's cool, but it's more of the same" and then dropped it after a month. Ironically it'll take someone like Blizzard to have the clout to break the mould and shake things up a bit. And I can't see them being allowed
And a lot of people played it, said "Yeah, it's cool, but it's more of the same" and then dropped it after a month. Ironically it'll take someone like Blizzard to have the clout to break the mould and shake things up a bit. And I can't see them being allowed
Yeah Rift summed it up for me too, I couldn't find much fault with it but at the same time somehow didn't feel anything for it. I think the original essence of MMO is dead now that the true economic potential is revealed. The market is split into mainly either hundreds of eastern-style, item mall, half-arsed games designed to make a lot of money off grind-loving, vain character customisers. Or high expense theme-park, tried and tested moulds. Either of these styles brings in a lot of players, and unless they make some retarded mess up they know they'll keep making an income. All we can hope for is the odd diamond that surprises us in an otherwise now completely stale swamp.
My favourite MMO will always be my first, Legend of Mir 2. Only had a few hundred players, but there was no mini map or map, no level cap, you started in a woodland with no clothes on and a stick to start killing things. You started to get a feel for the world and started to get to know people, who you'd recognise because there wasn't 1000s of people constantly coming and going. I'll leave the ranting there, don't want to hi-jack SWTOR any longer
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My favourite MMO will always be my first, Legend of Mir 2. Only had a few hundred players, but there was no mini map or map, no level cap, you started in a woodland with no clothes on and a stick to start killing things. You started to get a feel for the world and started to get to know people, who you'd recognise because there wasn't 1000s of people constantly coming and going. I'll leave the ranting there, don't want to hi-jack SWTOR any longer
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I dunno, I think we started to see the beginning of it with Rift. Very polished, very enjoyable, but still very much a solo-through-it-here's-some-epic-gear-and-a-pat-on-the-back type game.
And a lot of people played it, said "Yeah, it's cool, but it's more of the same" and then dropped it after a month. Ironically it'll take someone like Blizzard to have the clout to break the mould and shake things up a bit. And I can't see them being allowed
Give me the lottery winnings on Friday and I will make my MMO design come to life !
I've have one all laid out in my head for a long time now, game mechanics, professions, PvP, PvE, grouping, factions, crafting. Got the lot worked out in my head. Its not fantasy though, its set in earths wild west. Give me the lottery millions and I'll get the team together and bring back the wonder of UO and Daoc , and I wont give a hoot if it financially booms or not because I'll already have £160m from the lottery win
Oh dear, someone is starting the ball rolling with this whole instanced planets thing.
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=368606
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=368606
Guardians have a DPS tree but you'd never outdamage a Sentinel of a similar gear/skill level. I suppose that's a given.
I'd imagine Guardian's specced as DPS would make decent off tanks, but then, I've not seen a need for fully specced tanks yet, let alone off tanks! (I'm level 30).
hey ! Thats a direct copy of my post from earlier in this thread ! I should have stuck a copyright symbol on my post
hey ! Thats a direct copy of my post from earlier in this thread ! I should have stuck a copyright symbol on my post
Hahahaha! Thats exactly what i thought when i read it!
Soldato
