Star Wars: The Old Republic Random Question/Discussion thread - F2P

[volcanicweather]

This thread is hilarious, why are people making such a big deal about healing rockets? Jesus it's just a video game... I don't care if the game has healing cupcakes or hell even healing snackpacks, if it's a fun and/or entertaining game I'll give it a shot.

[Elvis]

healing cupcakes would make more sense

[Katlan]

Healing cupcakes would totally makes more sense. You eat em and gain hp! Food you can eat in combat!

[vrumpt]

Pumped for this game regardless, people can say what they want. I'll take lightsabers and blasters over bunny people and BiS bikini armor any day of the week, thats just who i am.

[Purrrfect]

Rocket explodes before impact into a shower of nanomachines that repair tissue until their power runs out. Dilemma solved.

[Guyverarmor]

Pumped for this game regardless, people can say what they want. I'll take lightsabers and blasters over bunny people and BiS bikini armor any day of the week, thats just who i am.

I agree... at the end of the day, give me a Sith saber so I can battle against a Jedi !

[Kipling]

Pumped for this game regardless, people can say what they want. I'll take lightsabers and blasters over bunny people and BiS bikini armor any day of the week, thats just who i am.

I am awaiting TERA, but also incredibly psyched for this game. To each his own, I just happen to be interested in both! Always been a huge lover of the Star Wars lore, and can't wait to explore what the open beta/retail will have to offer. Considering their track record, I have faith in Bioware.

[vrumpt]

Time for some pre-E3 goodness.

some class videos from the past few weeks.







Pre-E3 interview and trailer





In addition there is going to be yet another BLUR cinematic and some more info on SWTOR raids, known as Operations. Possibly other goodies, we'll see.

[Eaglestrike]

How combat looks in a trailer or on somebodys screen is entirely different than actually playing it and seeing how it feels in game. I personally feel nothing by watching gameplay trailers of other games. Bioware's goal is to have combat feel epic. They have said that many times, and can probably pull it off. I don't think that combat will be bad at all, just familiar.


EDIT: thinking more about this, pretty much every game needs something to drive it along. combat/gameplay is the vehicle that takes there, but ultimately you need a reason to go and move forward. What Rift and WoW does is pretty much fall back entirely on that gameplay mechanic as the only really drive to move forward is the satisfaction of leveling up and being rewarded for doing so. In Mass Effect, i'm not running down a corridor shooting collector 1 and 2, then using ability A, i'm assaulting the collector base in an attempt to save the galaxy. Everything that makes good games good is how you act in context to whats going on around you. WoW was probably the first MMO a great many of people played, so thats an entirely new genre that people had to experience. They were fine just playing the game and killing stuff, because it was a new experience and people could get away with random quests as what to do in game. Until now, MMOs have been able to pretty much ride on just people enjoying the gameplay, but now people need some more reason to play.

Some games are trying to reinvent the wheel because they think that simply giving players a new gameplay system to ride on will be enough to go to recreate that rewarding experience, with the drive being just having fun playing the game. Now we have Bioware using story as a drive, and physically giving us a reason to go do everything. We're going out and defending our ship from a sith ambush, or assaulting the military base of Taral V and at the same time exploring its secrets. Now we're actually doing something, rather than having random quests or a random dungeon filled with loot, again, as a reason to play the gameplay. When all you have is this as your drive, people are gonna get bored with it.

This is what ToR is going to do, its going to open up the 'why' question and add new drive to a beaten genre.

You say this and yet FFXI was a very story-driven MMO and the vast majority of players entered through cutscenes and didn't give a shit.

Most people don't care for storyline, they care for explosions, fighting, stuff dying, etc. I'm sure someone could back me up with numbers here but look at movies:

Good storyline, no explosions/action sequences = Poor to decent box office showing.
Bad storyline, good explosions/action sequences = Decent to good box office showing.
Ok storyline, excellent explosions/action sequences = Transformers is doing how well?
Good storyline, good action sequences = hi2u Inception

Oh wait, Transformers 2 did better than Inception, despite terrible reviews (bad plot) and just being explosions and action. Inception is a rather thought-provoking clever film with still a good bit of action but couldn't beat the movie with more action.

People want gameplay first, it is THE most important aspect of an MMO, BY FAR. If you want the best game, you still get a solid storyline, because bringing in the storyline demographic is really good as those people talk and chatter on forums. But gameplay is what draws people, gameplay is what keeps people, and it is far easier to keep people with solid gameplay.

I can see ToR failing just to prove this point. It'll likely still make its money back, Star Wars + BioWare = units sold, but didn't FFXIV have a rather decent launch still? Hmm.

[Katlan]

lol, isnt this the 3rd E3 this mmo has been shown at?

and XIV has a pretty terrible launch compared to other mmo's. everyone knew the game would be shit from OB, only the dedicated continued to play thinking it would be otherwise

[vrumpt]

yeah, 3rd E3 and hopefully the last. 3 cinematic trailers after this is done. Its pretty overkill i think, but at least we're supposed to get a decent chunk of game play info this year. Last year was pretty much one boss fight video with horrible commentary. This year they're actually at a booth and people will be able to play. They'll have Tatooine set up where people can just run around and explore and do stuff playing sith classes.

[Katlan]

They'll have Tatooine set up where people can just run around and explore and do stuff playing sith classes.

So they will have the most boring planet available to walk around? yay desert

[vrumpt]

So they will have the most boring planet available to walk around? yay desert

pretty much my reaction as well, but their logic is that its the most iconic star wars planet. Would have preferred to see Hoth personally but meh, better than nothing.

[niwaar]

Hoth? Pretty much as bad as Tatooine. Just replace sand with snow and have at it. I'd have actually preferred to see Alderaan or Coruscant. Both are iconic and far more interesting. They had a lot of "iconic" worlds they could have used, its sad to see them just take the easy way out.

[miokomioko]

Dagobah/Endor would be my pick for memorable locale while not having the most boring terrain ever.

[vrumpt]

Alderaan actually wouldn't have been a bad choice, especially with how big the devs are saying it is (6-7 WoW zones is the claim).

[volcanicweather]

Even though this forum isn't giving this game a ton of buzz, probably because it has been in development seemingly forever, it seems as if it's the MMO a lot of people are holding out for. Has anyone else noticed a similar trend? I know this forum is obviously TERA heavy, but playing lolDCUO on and off for the past couple months I'm seeing a lot of people talking about how they are just playing the game to "kill time until TOR comes out".

[Ohemgee]

The same thing with Rift.

[Katlan]

I think a lot of ppl are just playing w/e MMO waiting for the next big thing. I don't know many ppl who are happy w/ WoW even... or even anxiously awaiting lol4.2, they just play it because there is no other mmo out atm they care at all for.

I'm hyped for TERA, but that will be released several months before Star Wars even gets a release date (haha). I don't think TERA will fail, but if it does ill end up checking out SW prolly

[Grey Jorildyn]

Yeah I dunno why it doesn't have much of a buzz here on BG, but it's similar on other, unofficial fan sites too it seems. I've been recruiting for a couple weeks on a half-dozen sites with a few scattered apps here and there. Could be it doesn't have people's attention because, as said. there's no release date in sight and bioware is keeping a lot of stuff hush-hush or locked behind NDA.

I am far more interested in this mmo than Tera and am playing ffxiv both because I enjoy my crew and it's a decent time-spent until TOR launches. But it's hard to be in anticipation when there's no tangible timeframe to hang onto.