I was talking with a good friend the other day about Star Wars: The Old Republic. He is a long time gamer and a huge Star Wars fan, but when I asked him if he was going to play the game he surprised me by saying that he wouldn’t. In his opinion it is going to suck for the simple reason that everyone will end up playing some version of a Jedi. While I can’t disagree with this point, I believe that TOR will suck for many other reasons as well.
It is no secret that EA want TOR to be their WoW killer, and they will have to with a $300 million investment. Their method of competing with WoW has been to make WoW in space. Star Wars space to be exact. From everything that I have been able to read online and watch on youtube it seems that they are trying to make it as accessible as possible to players who are familiar with WoW. EA is not trying to reinvent the wheel, they want to play it safe. Sure they have attempted to make their own mark with features such as Flashpoint Missions and Crew Skills, as well as enough voice acting to fill 20 gig on your hard drive. But most of it is a straight copy and the question is, after six years is it still feasible to kill WoW by copying it?
Because lets take into consideration where a lot of players are with WoW right now. The two biggest issues with WoW in its current state are immersion and the community, as in there is no community and there is very little immersion, (witness the blue post where they stated that they want to make loot tables accessible at the start of instances. Check it out on Nils blog with some great points from him as well.) Blizzards answer to solving the ‘kill ten rats problem’ has been to place the player on rails via extensive phasing, scripted gameplay, and linear questing. This together with the LFG system has made players realise that the only time they are actually playing an interactive MMO is when they are using the auction house. There are a lot of factors at play that could conceivably result in WoW losing extensive market share in the future to another MMO. But not an MMO that is copying WoW, and particularly copying the ‘kill ten rats problem’ and the storyline solo questing as well. You don’t gain market share by copying something that is on the verge of not working any more.
But EA has chosen this path. Cataclysm’s sales must have surely gladdened the hearts of the EA executive management, but this is merely a short term indicator of where the MMO market is in the present time. The EA louse and his loveable ramblings aside, it doesn’t seem that EA has its finger on the ball when it comes to working out what the hell is going on even when it’s punching them in the face. And even if they do realise the situation, what are they going to do; change everything now? I am sure that TOR will ship a very large number of units on release, possibly even the most MMO units ever sold. But with EA not even sure if it will be a free to play model or a straight subscription, the meat in the pudding will be six or even three months down the track after release. And EA have a terrible track record of MMO publications, quite possibly the worst ever. With EA being a public company, and thus having shareholders who are both champing at the bit to get the product out and worried about their share price, you can bet your bottom dollar that EA is leaning on Bioware at every point. Bioware might make good games, but you can trust EA to stuff it up. There is also the terrible possibility that Lucasarts is involved in making this, or at the least is looking over Biowares shoulder and giving or withholding approval as they see fit.
And even if all of this doesn’t pan out, well, as my friend said, just about everyone will play a Jedi.
January 31, 2011 at 5:53 am
I really really hope you’re wrong, but you know what they say about hope springing eternal…
I have a lot of faith in Bioware and not nearly as much hate for EA games as I do for Activision, so I’m hoping for the best.
P.S. you’re wrong about people only playing some sort of Jedi/Sith. only about half of them will, the other half will channel their inner Han Solo and play smugglers
January 31, 2011 at 7:32 am
You seem to be missing an important part of your assumption about Jedi too:
The only tanks and healing classes in ToR will be Jedi/Sith – so yes, everyone will be playing a Jedi but the converse is they have to also work if they want to do group content.
January 31, 2011 at 7:51 am
Maybe that is what BW wanted? They figured the best way to solve the eternal tank/healer shortage is to make the obvious over-populated class the one with the greatest group utility.
That being said, I do constantly worry about the EA influence on the game, and whether it will be “good enough” from an investor standpoint to not gut the development team into a ghost town bug support only team (like Mythic feels like currently). However, Adam I think you overvalue the perceived loss in community and multiplayer as a bad thing for WoW and its competitor clones. Maybe you and I can see that loss as something detrimental to the game as whole, but the hordes of casuals see a streamlined, efficient game that gets them to endgame and “hard heroics” and “impossible raids.” The old-school RPG’ers and MMO’ers might feel this loss and dream of better days, but at the end we keep playing, hoping for something to reclaim the glory. And we cant find it, and go back to WoW anyway despite those issues. So our group might not leave for good and play SWTOR like we do WoW, but the casuals will find something new that feels the same and stick with it. And who knows, maybe it will be new enough, and feel that same enough to hold our attention, to be our constant, until we find that game that gives us back all that we want.
January 31, 2011 at 10:44 am
As for everybody playing only jedi/sith, i agree most will, and the rest will go for other classes. I personally am going for smuggler.
As for tanks and healers being jedi/sith only, you are mistaken.
The trooper and bounty hunter classes can be tanks, and the imperial agent and smuggler can be healers.
They have also added another 3rd healer that we dont know yet. So as it is its not the force classes that can tank and heal. I personally am looking forward to the game, even if it is a copy of wow, id rather pay them a monthly fee and play something i havent played till exaustion. Im so tired of wow that it seems like i know where every quest and quest item is, and that every heroic/raid is more of the same…
January 31, 2011 at 10:41 am
>The only tanks and healing classes in ToR will be Jedi/Sith<
Just no. 4 classes with each 2 specialisations. It is confirmed that there will be at least 3/8 with the possibility to spec into healers (one being a force user and the other one the imp.agent / smuggler). Tanks are at least 2 confirmed: again one force user and the trooper/bounty hunter
January 31, 2011 at 1:02 pm
One can only accurately copy the “how”, not the “why”. Plenty examples of bad clones in pretty much every line of business.
The question isn’t if it will suck, but how bad it will suck.
With WoW unsubbed and in the trash (right-clicked, emptied, this time), and no (upcoming) alternatives that I know of… what to do next?!
March 11, 2011 at 7:48 pm
You should really consider how wrong you are. There are 2 non-force using tank classes, as well as 2 non-force healing classes. So in retrospect, the Jedi to non-Jedi ratio mechanically is even. While players might not opt to play it out that way, it’s simply the same situation as with the ‘Everyone wants to play as a Worgen’ argument when Cataclysm was nearing launch.
Speculate all you want, TOR is proving every day that it will be a solid experience. While I don’t approve of them trying to compete with Blizzard in this way (I’ve been a Blizz fan since WC2), it could very well be the MMO of this decade.
March 12, 2011 at 10:44 pm
So will you be playing a non force using tank or healer? I wonder you know, seeing as your username is ‘jedi tank’.
March 12, 2011 at 10:57 pm
I think you missed my point. Not everyone is going to play a jedi or sith. This post stats that tanks and healers can only be jedi or sith, which is completely wrong.
July 27, 2011 at 5:55 pm
swtor is going to suck. you will play hard for the final because you will think of a kotor like gaming experience and then nothing. only you and some planets, stupid mobs and useless gear. The best you can do in the game is socialising with some lows,
I would rather have a nice time in a singleplayer like assassin’s creed or kotor before i start to make a science of the perfect build, the best class, the perfect gear or the right way for pvping. In the end there are copies of the same class with the same gear and no induvidialism. It’s fucking stupid.
October 1, 2011 at 9:31 pm
The following are issues I find unforgiving without having played it:
- the use of personal shields
- the use of minigun-like blasters
- using the boring star wars prequel IP (meaning, the non classic one)
- bland texture and modeling work on characters
October 7, 2011 at 2:02 am
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