Star Wars: The Old Republic

[Lyion]

Anyone interested in a guild for this, drop me a board message or IM me.

[Harrison]

Waiting to hear more about it before I decide if it's worth playing or not.

So far, this "welfare epic" business I hear about doesn't turn me on much to end game.

[baddwin]

I buy my pre release of the game, i really looking to try this game. For now i playing rift, but my new guild don't have place for the raid i am on the waiting list.... this is getting dull

As soon we know the opening date i will be interested to play.

[Durothil Skyreaver]

I'd still prefer to get a chance at beta (of some kind) to get a feel for the game. Tired of spending money on games that have no real lasting appeal (Rift I'm looking at you).

[Lyion]

I've pre-ordered and I'll give it a go.

I enjoyed Rift, but the design for Rift was way too much like WOW, and the environment just way too generic to hold my interest. I'm pretty much done with WOW unless a future expansion changes the direction of the game. I had a blast, it just really isn't that interesting to me right now.

I'm hoping SW:TOR has the story elements I love from Bioware as well as some of the MMO hooks that make socializing, raiding, and auctioneering fun. I agree it might not last but as I'm a huge fan of their previous games I'm holding out hope.

[Kaemon]

I went ahead and preordered.

[Hatak]

I haven't pre-ordered (yet) but I know I"ll play this game. A friend of mine and I are planning on both trying it out. I haven't been playing any game for a while.

[Arlos]

Also pre-ordered.

-Arlos

[Tossica]

Unless they make it punishingly hard, it will suck.

[Lyion]

Then this won't be your game, Toss. However, there are plenty of fresh Korean MMO's for those looking for masochistic slow leveling and rare item drops. Really, the AAA MMO is now the province of casuals, since it doesn't make sense to aim for a small niche group.

I'm hoping for Bioware story driven leveling, fun & smart design, MMO hooks, and a ton of Star Wars lore as I remain a SW geek despite the abominations that were the prequels. If I get as much fun per class as the average SW:TOR or ME game, I'll be a happy camper, regardless of the MMO portion.

I'm cautiously optimistic that the game will be decent longterm.

[Tossica]

Punishingly hard does not equal slow leveling and rare item drops. I don't care if I level at all and camping for items is weak. I'd be happy with little to no advancement and using rusty weapons and armor throughout the whole game as long as the content is interesting and the encounters are challenging. If you are skilled enough to survive the encounter, you should be rewarded, if you aren't there should be a stiff penalty.

[Arlos]

The thing is, though, where is the "stiff penalty" line on an absolute scale? What you consider stiff, someone else might consider crippling, and someone else might consider weak. Indeed, I think there are some people out there who won't be happy with in-game penalties until upon death their computer box opens up, extends a hammer on a robotic arm, which then hauls off and slams you in the nuts.

-Arlos

[Harrison]

I don't even game as much as I used to and I still find MOST games to be fucking terribly too easy. Like...pre-school fucking simplicity.

Then the games that do require a modicum of ability, tank, because people are handfed pussies now.

Cataclysm took a kneejerk difficulty turn from Wrath of the Easymode, to awesomeness. Then, when everyone fucking cried, they turned down the difficulty after the rest of us went through it the proper way. Now those pussies get the same loot, easier.

Fuck that shit. I STAND IN FIRE WHY MY CORRUPTION HIGH?! Oh, we should nerf these encounters. Pussies can't handle it and bawwing up our forums. $$$$$$

[Lyion]

I agree Arlos. Games definitely have to design based on the lowest common denominator: the dirty unattentive casual.

I'd guess some of the encounters will be challenging, and many very interesting. I don't see anything in any AAA from here on out being 'punishing' a la EQ, though. Most people do not want that.

I'd personally love a game with permadeath and ridiculously hard areas that made one think and really strategize, versus the tried and true rinse and repeat method of learning. I still laugh at my early EQ memories of being curbstomped by Dorn while leveling in Ro.

What I really want though is a game that is completely different from EQ or WOW, and fun and innovative. I don't see it on the horizon yet. My other problem is now that I'm in my early 40s, gaming is a lot less interesting to me. I'm not sure if it's me, personally, or if it's just most new games are copies of other older games.

[brinstar]

i know i've shilled for them before but IMO that's one of the biggest arguments for the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series - shit's hard, and there's no tutorial level to speak of. they just plop you in a radioactive forest with a shitty unsilenced pistol, it's nighttime, and there are psionic mutant dogs nearby that will fuck your shit up. by the time you can actually afford all the best gear the game is almost over anyway

i'm not sure how to duplicate that sort of challenge in an MMO anymore - game devs have moved away from the whole "welcome to qeynos hills, you can't see shit, that skeleton over there would be happy to rape you, and it will be weeks before you get your hands on gear with actual STATS" ethic

[Tikker]

yup, it's hard to explain

for example, my GF is a big WOW nut

she really briefly played EQ, but not past lvl 20


she just can't fathom the idea of keeping an item for years, or treasuring some old peice of loot (fungi, journeyman walking stick, vox res stick, rune proc'ing weapons,etc etc etc)

for me, what I loved about EQ was the rarish, not super easy (but not insane) to obtain items to round out your character

[Harrison]

I doubt I could name a single item that isn't pvp gear on my 85 on WoW.

I loved the raids, but the loot was just another cookiecutter incremental increase that I weighed in on my calculations depending on my specific little minmaxing build.

[Drem]

skyrim's gonna be good

[brinstar]

treasuring some old peice of loot

CIRCLET OF SHADOW BIATCH

[Lyion]

EQ was great, but I lack the patience or time to ever invest what was needed to do it again. I played WOW twice as long, and probably put in 1/5 of the time for 10 times the amount of gear and raids. I've played a bunch of MMOs before and after WOW, but they all seem minor in changes from the EQ design, except EVE, which would be brilliant except I dislike the flight modeling.

SW:TOR will be a novelty due to the Star Wars hooks and my love off the original movies {and wookieepedia and the extended universe} but what I'm really looking forward to is the truly nextgen non-mudflation MMO to blow me away.

Skyrim does look cool, and I'll play the hell out of it and mods, but it's a different sort of beast. Watch SW:TOR release a week after it... Oi Vey

[Tikker]

i can't name a single item i've ever had in WoW, except some of the EQ inside joke ones (malown's slam, for instance)

but I could still probably rattle off most of the gear that any of my eq chars wore at each expansion

[Harrison]

EVE is such a good game ruined by mechanics that promote griefing.

[Drem]

EQ was great, but I lack the patience or time to ever invest what was needed to do it again. I played WOW twice as long, and probably put in 1/5 of the time for 10 times the amount of gear and raids. I've played a bunch of MMOs before and after WOW, but they all seem minor in changes from the EQ design, except EVE, which would be brilliant except I dislike the flight modeling.

SW:TOR will be a novelty due to the Star Wars hooks and my love off the original movies {and wookieepedia and the extended universe} but what I'm really looking forward to is the truly nextgen non-mudflation MMO to blow me away.

Skyrim does look cool, and I'll play the hell out of it and mods, but it's a different sort of beast. Watch SW:TOR release a week after it... Oi Vey

i think the funny part is that skyrim isn't a different sort of beast. i played the ever-loving shit out of morrowind because the level of difficulty and the originality of the world honestly compared (to me) to my EQ experience. oblivion was awful and i haven't and won't even try to beat it, but i'm holding out hope for skyrim. mostly because passive changes that they've finally decided to make, like having passive monsters. because everything in every elder scrolls game ever would just run at you as soon as it saw you. and having unspoken factions, like attacking the mammoth makes the giant socially aggro you, takes me back to old EQ, because literally no other game has that dynamic afaik. even most other MMOs don't have proper faction to make things interesting, including everquest post velious

also i hated oblivion because the world was randomly generated. i think they abandoned that—or it felt like it anyway—for fallout 3 (don't know for sure) and it's confirmed that every aspect of skyrim is hand-drawn and has thought behind it. and differing landscapes etc. something oblivion sorely lacked

i'm really excited for it, anyway. not only because it's the first elder scrolls game w/ dragons, but because the dragons are non-scripted and the AI is apparently randomly brilliant. and you know if you put any of these games into an MMO model they'd work extremely well. sort of why i wonder why bethesda has never done that. then realise.... MMOs are constrained to time. none of us will ever re-live velious because it already happened. but every time you play morrowind it's the same. unless you mod it. i think they do it so that you can tell your friends about it then they can actually go experience what you experienced

i dunno, weird train of thought, and i know bethesda games so far haven't quite reached the diversity of an MMO but they're damn close. and i think skyrim's going to be their best game yet

[Lyion]

It's a different sort of beast in that it's a choose your own adventure novel vs. a 'grouping AD&D session with friends', which most fantasy MMO's are derived from.

Gameplay and storywise Bethesda games are awesome. They have depth, breadth, and a ton of content. The mod system destroys anything, including NWN 1 & 2. As you mentioned they have good replayability. I really wish Bethesda would go the extra step and allow co-op based play and build a game around playing with a few friends. Something like that with a high level of mod support would probably be better than 99% of the MMOs out there, past or future.

Harri, I love EVE's design. I think there is griefing but it's the way an MMO should be designed. The thing that kills EVE for me remains the flight model. It's a shame they didn't copy SWGs, as Jump to Lightspeed remains the best flight system out there.

[Tikker]

RAmen

oblivion or morrowind with 2-3 player coop would be spectacular