January 2, 2010, 8:21 pm
If the release schedules and expectations hold, 2010 will be an interesting year. There are the two huge science-fiction IP’s coming via Star Trek Online and Star Wars: The Old Republic, Blizzard is doing something of a reboot of the Warcraft world, and the DC/SOE juggernaut is expected as well. SWTOR is also interesting since it marks Bioware’s entry into the MMO genre, and I’m very very interested to see how well they are able to bring a focus on story over to a massively multi-player environment.
My biggest concern for 2010 is a repeat of the Warhammer effect on SWTOR. Warranted or not there seem to be a lot of players who are expecting SWTOR to revolutionize MMOs, kill WoW, and possibly cure cancer. I hope I’m wrong, but I think that most of the gamers disappointed with 2009 will also be disappointed with 2010.
So here are my bullet points for the coming year. Continue reading ‘Looking Forward to 2010’ »
September 16, 2009, 4:58 pm
After seeing more of the game-play footage, I’m wondering if there will be pickup groups in TOR. Assuming that you can find players at the same point in a story quest, is it really a good idea to group with strangers knowing that they are going to be making from of the dialogue choices? This seems like a new way to grief people. You group up with a light-side Jedi and try to steer all of the conversations toward the dark-side end of the scale.
June 6, 2009, 9:17 pm
Bioware has a history of producing great single-player RPG’s with excellent stories. For their MMO, they’ve said many times that they are focusing on story. Sounds good to me, I’m really curious about the details. There are lots of problems involved with having an impactful story in a multi-player environment. I’m sure instancing and/or phasing will play some roll, but will they be able balance that against having players play together? Or will we end up with a massively singe-player online RPG?
One problem occurred to me last night that I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere (either by Bioware or other bloggers). How will they handle end-game content? All single player games have an ending. All stories must having endings. So what happens when you’re Bounty Hunter, Smuggler, Commando, or Jedi/Sith completes their epic story arc? Having a raiding end-game seems like a big let-down after experiencing however many levels of an epic single-player story arc. Maybe Bioware is counting on players to re-roll and play though the other class epic arcs to give them time to add expansions. They could stick to the standard raiding, or maybe open the end-game up to a PvP focus between the Sith Empire and the Galactic Republic. The choices Bioware make for their end-game should be a good indicator of if and how much their game move the genre forward.
