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Star Wars: The Old Republic [Releasing Date: Dec 20 NA/EU - NDA Lifted]
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HarryDemeanor
Member
This sounds like a really interesting mechanic. It's good to see they're trying to combat PvP CC abuse like the dreaded chain-fear was in WoW.
Next week there is a fan site summit at BioWare's office in Austin, Texas. Both US and EU sites have been invited to this 2 day event. Hands-on with SWTOR, tour around the offices and interviews. Very cool initiative from BioWare. There is an NDA on the event which appears to coincide with that of the pc magazines (London event). Both are most likely to be lifted around May 4th.
Some news on questing with friends:
Some news on questing with friends:
MaddenNFL64
Member
Ya, I plan to party up with a friend of mine, so im glad that the class story takes everyone to the same hubs, good stuff.
Also nice that you can possibly 2 man the flashpoints with your companions, to make a group of 4.
Also nice that you can possibly 2 man the flashpoints with your companions, to make a group of 4.
A blanket CC immunity mechanic is a great thing. The way it's implemented also sounds like they'll be able to tweak it easily and find the right balance.
Nothing kills PvP more than an abundance of CC. "Hey, everytime you enter combat you literally won't be able to play or move your character for about 20 seconds! Doesn't that sound fun!". CC has its place, but it needs to be extremely limited.
Nothing kills PvP more than an abundance of CC. "Hey, everytime you enter combat you literally won't be able to play or move your character for about 20 seconds! Doesn't that sound fun!". CC has its place, but it needs to be extremely limited.
BattleMonkey
Member
CC has killed PVP in RIFT for me, some of the worst I've ever seen in a MMO.
Zod the Bear
Member
More information on my chosen class is always a good thing. Thanks.
BattleMonkey said:
PvP in that game is so fucking bad. It's shocking, actually.
Door2Dawn said:
Thank god gear is not locked to rank. Getting into PvP is hard enough as it is for anyone coming in late or after the initial wave, having the decent gear locked behind ranks just makes it brutal. It turns into a "rich get richer" situation almost immediately. AoC is a good example of just how bad it can get.
And I know it's not what PC Gamer meant, but I hope TOR has cool open world PvP like Warhammer does (or at least tried to do). It's clear they're referencing how tanks work in PvP and the Renown-like system, but I can dream.
R2D2 visiting BioWare's studio: http://twitpic.com/4npiq6
Decent write up. I'm really excited for the PvP in the game. These two lines are really comforting:Door2Dawn said:
The_Inquisitor
Member
Sounding better and better. How about a fucking release date?
please?
Nothing will be announced before May 4th or maybe even E3/GDC.The_Inquisitor said:
PC Gamer put Autumn 2011 as a release in their article (see above) and Stephen Reid responded with this quote on Twitter:
Story arc is roughly 200 hours including class quests and all cinematics. By the end of the story you should be level 50. Obviously, there'll be a competition to reach end game first. Some testers said that the difference between level 1 and 15 in terms of level curve wasn't too big. To be fair, you get more exp from quests than you do from grinding.Izayoi said:
ThatObviousUser
ὠαἴÏÏιÏÏÎ¿Ï Ïαá¿Ï εἶ
Whoah 200 hours? That's massive.
Vigilant Walrus
Member
Not for a MMO.
ThatObviousUser
ὠαἴÏÏιÏÏÎ¿Ï Ïαá¿Ï εἶ
Vigilant Walrus said:
Well I'm expecting it to be mostly quests and cutscenes and such. When taken as that, 200 hours for every class is a pretty massive chunk of content.
Not that I expected any less.
Vigilant Walrus
Member
Izayoi said:
The releases of modern MMOs have died down since all the recent failures.
On top of my head don't you think many of the latest big ones; Aion, Conan, Warhammer, and so on, are in the 150-200 Hours ballpark?
All those games, I recall had their developers saying it wouldn't be a grind, and there wouldn't be fed-ex quests. But it always ends up like that. There are always some of it, that just sneaks in. It's like it's impossible to these projects with top of the line quality all the way through. They need to scrap the bread dry.
And for what? We know the hardcore people are going to rush through to max level and seconds afterwards go to the message boards complaining about a lack of end game. Like the dude who got max level in Rift in one single game session thanks to taking drugs that pilot use to stay awake when flying F16s.
I've always loved the Guild Wars philosophy. Because it is actually a philosophy more than game design. It's not just an idea on how to build a game, but how to play it. There is not a single good reason why games like this needs to have this gigantic overflow of content.
My own census is that MMOs of the past have always had so terrible combat and basic generic mob killing, against a lame AI, that developers needed to sway the carrot stick, to indulge peoples collect-a-thon senses.
Why did nobody before set out to make a game that was so fun, that even if it didn't had levels, items, loot or such, that people would still play it just because it was so good? The constant need to be rewarded to me, is a sign of a game that is not strong enough in itself.
But with SWTOR, Tera and Guild Wars 2, I think developers are realizing this, and thus we have gotten active combat, a stab at actual storytelling and so on. I hope all three titles will be grand. Life really is too short to these time wasting MMOs.
In the end I think 200 hours to reach the end point is fine, as long as it scales like that. Like a good movie, it needs to keep momentum up. Otherwise you need to reduce it, to keep it good all the way through. It's entertainment. It needs to be instantaneously rewarding from beginning to end, and a lot of MMOs have missed that mark in the past.
A key component as well, I think is to design the game in a way that allows you to engage the fun bits relatively quickly. In older MMORPGs it could take you 30 minutes just to go to where you wanted to go. Well, if you only have thirty minutes to play, then that is not not very fun, to boot up the game, and just walk your character, and then log off.
Every gaming session should tell it's own little story. Not in the sense of completing a quest, or reaching an end, but just having a player go do something in the world, should quickly allow the player to get feel gratified from one session, let it be 15 minutes or 3 hours.
Out of those, if you were efficient, only Aion hit the 200 hour mark - and that's because of the horrific grind that started around 40. If the game wasn't such a snooze fest a grind would have been fine. Too bad I could pretty much play Aion (and most tile-clicker games, for that matter) in my sleep.Vigilant Walrus said:
TERA, at least, is fucking awesome. There's been no grind through level 43 (cap 50), and even if there were I don't think I would mind. I could definitely grind from 1 to 50 if they forced me to. It's like a streamlined version of Monster Hunter, just with a far more expansive world and way more people to play with, and god knows how much time I've sunk into Monster Hunter titles.Vigilant Walrus said:
I agree completely. If the combat is fun, even if there were a grind, it'd be fine. 200 hours is definitely an acceptable number for me, and if it's fun, I will without a doubt stick around for the entire thing.Vigilant Walrus said:
BattleMonkey
Member
bjaelke said:
Awesome sauce.
And it's going to cover the Exile as well!
Mister Wilhelm
Member
Andrex said:
I expect 50% of that is dialog most of us will skip.
BattleMonkey
Member
hiryu said:
I'm sure it's just pr speak mainly and also doesn't account for a player basically power leveling through it either. They are just trying to make the game sound awesome with big numbers and inflating numbers by expecting people to spend time doing lot of things that don't really raise your character level as well.
Billychu said:
This. When I was playing it over the closed beta, the actual level count mattered very little other than how difficult a quest was in relation to my own exp (and considering this was early into beta, the difficult curve had not been ironed out). It was about reaching an area, being introduced to the local environment and resolving the problem that existed by completing the quests (imagine Icecrown's Argent crusade push/phasing).
Without slipping into NDA's, if you enjoyed KOTR, this is basically a 200 hour version of the that (with the various updates) as a solo experience. I would consider that high praise. My only issue with Old Republic is I'm not sure beyond what I've seen, how social this game is or how much personally I'd care about doing instances/raids in the grander scheme of things.
bjaelke said:
Checking on the two NDA's (or three), I can't talk about the content in the game, but yes they rotate testers all the time on undisclosed schedules. I met a few who were on for months, a few who were on for weeks. Your account is activated on a certain date, and deactivated on a certain date.
bjaelke said:
I'm 100% sure it won't be a massive bomb and that's a huge positive.
It seems PvP will be superior to WoW or most mmorpg and we know there's a lot of PvE content+ a significant storyline which is vastly superior to the competition. A combat system which is quite active is also a +, but I hope they improve upon space combat. Already a winning recipe in my book, but it remain to be seen if the endgame content can keep up as Bioware was clueless to good boss battle until the Lair of the shadow broker DLC for ME2.
archangelmorph
Member
Is it me or is this game desperately in need of SSAO...?
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