GWOnline - Blogs - Shrandar http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forums/blog.php?290425-Shrandar Guild Wars 2 Community Site en Sat, 25 May 2013 04:16:29 GMT vBulletin 60 http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forums/images/misc/rss.jpg GWOnline - Blogs - Shrandar http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forums/blog.php?290425-Shrandar Games, Greed and Business models http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forums/entry.php?6191-Games-Greed-and-Business-models Wed, 18 Apr 2012 07:43:35 GMT Originally posted here http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?495075-GW2-and-SW-TOR-at-the-forefront-of-MMORPG I thought it deserved a blog post as well, since its an important issue imo. ---Quote (Originally by Shrandar)--- ---Quote (Originally by RDarken)--- The EA... Originally posted here http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forum...ront-of-MMORPG
I thought it deserved a blog post as well, since its an important issue imo.


Quote Originally Posted by Shrandar View Post
Quote Originally Posted by RDarken View Post
The EA argument drives me up the wall. Aside from my personal experiences with them, the complaints just makes me want to punch every single person complaining. It's not so much that the complaints aren't valid - they often are. But the fact that people still buy the games is what bugs me. You can't support a company and then complain about everything they do. That's like pooping on your floor and then complaining that it smells like poop in your house.

Did anyone see that launch day BF3 screenshot? There was all this talk about boycotting BF3 for whatever reason (it was pulled off Steam? Maybe?) and someone posted an XFire or whatever screenshot of all these gamers and like 95% were playing BF3. DDdrrr

I think that part of the problem here is that there simply is not enough counterweight in the current game industry. Atm I know of two relatively large gamecompanies that distinguish themselves on the commercial front with a clear customer minded attitude. One is CDproject and GoG (Goold old Games- online retailer) the other is Anet. There are probably more but these are the ones I know of. CDProject made name with both Witcher Games, updating them, and releasing enhanced versions of them for free (new features, content etc) for those that had bought the original game. On top of that: when it turned out that Witcher 2 suffered heavy performance problems due to DRM they removed the DRM in one of the first patches shortly after release. GoG only yesterday with the release of the enhanced edition of Witcher 2 offered a free digital backup for everyone who alreay owned the game, nomatter where you had bought it from originally. This backup is fully patched, includes all DLC's (which were for free to start with I might add) and is updated with the enhanced edition. Anet probably needs no further explanation here.

The point is that we are conditioned to expect the worst when it comes to game companies, a good example is all the knee-jerk reactions to the casshop leaks recently. Even though Anet has been pretty clear in their policy about micro transactions and has a good reputation when it comes to GW1 there were still a lot of people ready to believe that Anet had completely abandoned their ideals and turned to unaldulterated greed. And if it was not Anet then it was probably NCSoft.

What makes things worse is that the discussion among gamers in relation to these issues is often so convoluted. Two examples: Funcom recently announced that their new MMO The Secret World (TSW) will have a subscription accompanied with a casshop which according to to them will sell mostly convenience, cosmetics and account services. This announcement stirred quite a lot of discussion among the TSW community, suspecting Funcom trying to double dip. A lot of players decided to hold of on buying the game or even abandoned the idea all together but more worrying was that about as many didn't see a problem with this whatsoever; Funcom is a business after all, their main goal is to make money. The other example is SWTOR: at the release of the large content update 1.2 recently they send a mail to players to thank them for their loyalty and dedication and offered by way of thanks a free month of subscription. The nag was though that this mail and free month was only for level 50 players. Naturally this created an outrage at the forums, and worse a huge split in the community, with a lot of level 50 players accusing the ones that were not for being incompetent, idiotic and not deserving anything, after all if you cannot reach level cap in 4 months there must be something seriously wrong with you. The main problem (at least imo) that game play gets rewarded with real money rewards and in the process divides the community in two was hardly even recognized. Ofcourse everyone was supposed to be happy when after a day Bioware decided to widen the requirements for the free month.

As an afterthought: TotalBiscuit in his lates Mailbox discusses the viability of the b2p model in GW2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Mx0w...AAAABAA#t=9m5s
What is basically comes down to is that he has strong doubts wether their intended business model will succeed. For GW1 it worked because it was not a real MMO (aka no persistent world) but with GW2 being one he doesnt see how they will be able to fincance that (assuming the casshop will be completely optional). He considers a freemium model like for expample DDO uses as the best possible option for a f2p MMO.
]]> Shrandar http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forums/entry.php?6191-Games-Greed-and-Business-models Grind http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forums/entry.php?5484-Grind Wed, 07 Mar 2012 10:57:48 GMT This blogpost arose as a reaction to a discussion found here: http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?502121-Not-another-quot-ten-reasons-to-play-quot-video More specifically it responds to Alaris last post but in general it consists of musings over grind, timesinks and... This blogpost arose as a reaction to a discussion found here:

http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forum...lay-quot-video

More specifically it responds to Alaris last post but in general it consists of musings over grind, timesinks and different viewpoints on these.

Ways WoW's timesinks have been 'improved'

1 Travel times have been improved in a number of ways. Hearthstone (bind to specific location) teleport can be reduced from 30 to 15 minute with by guild achievements . Furthermore the dungeonfinder has enabled the instant teleport to dungeons for your group and also teleporting back to whatever location you were in before. There are teleports between major cities and locations which help you get around fairly easily in most cases. Another guild achievement gives you increased movement speed, at least on mounts.

2 It is true that the crafting is fairly grindy, they tried to counter that in the latest expansion by granting more crafting xp points for certain recipe's. This removes at least partly the infinite spam of lower quality items just to get your points increase and usually gives you gear that you can use while leveling and is generally best in slot compared to many of the items you get during questing. This improvent is across the board as far as I remember so crafting should be faster and more rewarding.

3 For new players there are two major ways to speed up levelling, either start with a death knight that starts at level 50 or have an already playing friend recruit you through the 'recruit a friend' option. This lets you level at tremendous speeds. Also joining a guild with the necessary achievements will give you around a 10% xp buff. While writing this I discovered they added another option through the 'scroll of resurrection' which lets you bring back a player who has been out of the game for a significant amount of time. The returning player gets 7 days free play time, a free upgrade to the Cata expansion and an immediate boost to 80 for one character if so desired.


Endgame and the inflation of the gameworld
The problem with the last point is imo however that its a symptom of a game that has more and more been gravitating towards end game. Wether this justifies letting people completely skip all the previous content is up for debate. A level-based MMO without scaling, naturally suffers from inflation of lower level content over the course of its existence. This is caused by a lot of things but lets focus on some that plague WoW nowadays. First would be that by increasing the xp gain across the board to enable faster levelling (allowing new people and alts to catch up) game play becomes, -due to outlevelling - less challenging and thus less rewarding. A second is the fact that to compensate for less people in the starter zones the content needs to be toned down in difficulty as to enable soloing throughout the majority of it. These first two combined make that the levelling is far less engaging and far more grindy then originally intended/experienced. Now I am not saying that vanilla WoW was so much better, in some respects it was even worse as it was often plagued by the "kill 10 rats and collect their tails" syndrom. With regards to this the Azeroth overhaul in Cata made brought a lot of improvement. Shamefully though the xp gain and the class overhauls were not balanced towards the new setup which in turn again led to a lot of the content (including dungeons) being virtually redundant in terms of challenge.
Turning to GW2 the the overall question seems to me not so much how to let people skip content as in how to keep content viable and fun. GW2 tries this with scaling DE's and story. The effects of that will hopefully be that levelling alts will be enjoyable and that returning to lower level area's will be more rewarding. In more abstract terms this would translate into variety and challenge which in turn should guarantee longevity for both new and existing players.

Longevity and community
This leads me to the other major theme that imo is important in this discussion namely longevity. Imo the common misunderstanding with the b2p model that GW2 employs is that they don't need to implement grinds because they don’t need to hold on to subscribers. The credo, if you are bored you stop without a financial aftermath, is without a doubt appealing to players but the idea of people stopping to play after they finished the content without implementing incentives to replay, or providing depth in terms of cap progression is counterproductive to any MMO. The strength of an MMO is first and foremost in its community and a community benefits from long term goals that they can gather around. The most frequent answer to the question why people still play a certain MMO is in 9 out of 10 cases the community they have build up during their time playing.

Community is also, according to Jeff Strain in http://www.guildwars.com/events/trad...7/gcspeech.php the main reason why most MMO's fail.

Due largely to the social nature of MMOs, gamers rarely commit to more than one or two MMOs at a time. This is in contrast to the traditional game market, in which there is room for many games to be successful, even within the same genre. You may play ten different action games this year, but you are very unlikely to play more than one or two MMOs. This means that it is not enough to make a great game – instead you must make a game that is so overwhelmingly superior that it can actively break apart an established community and bring that community to your game. In today's market, that is a tall order. Regardless of the business model, the primary factor that determines whether an MMO lives or dies is the size of its active player base.
Later on he states, indirectly quoting James Phinney (lead designer of Starcraft and Guild Wars) that half of the appeal of an MMO is the simple fact that there are other players. Following this the world /game design should be such that it creates a places where players want to be.

It is a truism that MMOs are all about community, and the success or failure of your MMO will largely be gated by how well the community coalesces and feels a strong sense of place in your world.
All this serves to state in a simple truth, we enjoy an MMO because it enables us to play together with others in a persistent environment. Variety and challenge enable us to do so and form social bonds along the way, which in turn makes us want to play longer. It seems clear that no matter what the business model that this is a goal that any MMO should want to pursue and most likely does in one way or another.

Downtime, social time and social engineering
In one of my first articles on MMO design and communities I explored the concept of downtime and its consequences for social interaction. This downtime involved 'activities' that by many people are considered time-wastes such as travelling but also downtime between fights (recovering mana/health). It was a bad article and not worth going into, however the concept is one that has been studied and employed in many online games.
I would like to refer to this article by Raphael Coster who was involved in Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies that provides a better insight in the material then I could http://www.raphkoster.com/2009/01/28...e-more-social/. In this article he argues that socialisation requires downtime. He says

Arguing about whether a game should have downtime in it is arguing whether the game should have those phases within itself, in the environment, or have them elsewhere, in forums and other communities. There are benefits and tradeoffs to each. Either way, socialisation does require downtime.
(Be sure to also read the link he provides to a post he made on the SWG forums regarding convenience and downtime http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/socialization.shtml)

He goes on to name some different approaches to this when done in-game. Funnily enough, coming from SWG he points out some issues in WoW that in his opinion hinder socialisation nonetheless I think that a lot of the premises also apply to WoW (and GW2 but that is another matter). From this viewpoint I think the argument could be made that a lot of these so called time-wastes are implemented not as easy ways to keep people paying their subscription longer but as 'spaces for socialisation'. Naturally this will mean a healthy pay-off for subscription based games but it is by no means something a b2p (or f2p) game can ignore.

WoW's dunegonfinder as example
The relevance of this issue is also shown by the often heated discussions that changes in xp gain, travel times etc ensue. The most (in)famous example in recent WoW history is probably the dungeon finder, heralded by a lot and despised by almost just as many. The dungeon finder eliminated all travel times by instantly transporting you to the dungeon and eliminated any form of chat advertising for groups through an automatic matchmaking system (which worked cross realm to boot). Clearly it favoured the classes most in demand, aka tanks and healers, and by no means eliminated wait times for dps but all in all it was a very convenient and easy way to look for a group while getting on with other activities in the meantime. While extremely convenient it also changed the social dynamic. The instant teleport encouraged more semi afk hub based online time which in turn significantly reduced traffic through zones. For many this made the world feel lifeless and empty. The cross realm feature itself, while hugely reducing wait-times, often meant bumping into a lot of strangers where chat was reduced to a minimum, often making people feel like they were running the dungeon with a group of henchmen. To add to this, the ignore function didn't work cross realm leaving little tools to deal with ninja-looters etc. All in all the dungeon finder has provoked a lot of debate, both in WoW and other MMO's that came after. Whether for or against it cannot solely be considered as promoting convenience but is a feature which has wide spreading implications on how social gameplay is brought about and managed.


Closing thoughts
I have been going on too long already so ill try to bring this to a close. Social engineering is part of MMO design. Time-sinks and grinds as forms of downtime have among others often been used as a tool for this. GW2 is an excellent example of explicit social engineering as a lot of their game play is specifically designed to encourage group play and cooperation. At the same time they remove or modifies a lot of the time-sinks often found in other MMO's, in terms of travel, levelling and gear treadmills. I am as excited about this as the next GW2 fanboy/girl but these modifications will have consequences for social dynamics, community forming and long term commitment. Whether they are good or bad we will have to see. ]]> Shrandar http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forums/entry.php?5484-Grind SW again, an ongoing review. http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forums/entry.php?2295-SW-again-an-ongoing-review Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:01:36 GMT Ok, I still play the game. Mainly because I want to give it a fair chance and for that I need more time. I will try and posts my impressions here, these are more of a reflection then a really thorough analysis of the different mechanics. Most is written from a WoW perespective since that is the MMO... Ok, I still play the game. Mainly because I want to give it a fair chance and for that I need more time. I will try and posts my impressions here, these are more of a reflection then a really thorough analysis of the different mechanics. Most is written from a WoW perespective since that is the MMO I know best, this might put some off but so be it :smiley:


This time a rather negative approach mainly going into what should be the main accomplishment of SW, the story.

The story is nice and if you ever felt like rping your character a bit more in relation to the gameworld, the dialogue's certainly give you the chance. That said I do get the feeling sometimes that this way of presenting quests is just a more lengthy exposure of the same reason you always quest in WoW: xp, items and money. I always read the stories (quest text) in WoW, at least the first time around, and while the class quests in SW certainly adds twists and turns with the choices you make, the side quests are not noticably better then the ones in WoW. Now it might be argued that the reason for questing in the end always boils down to xp, items and money, at least in MMO's. But here is where imo the schizophrenic character of SW comes into play; the presentation of story is so heavy and eleborate that it gives the impression of a grand sweeping tale but at the end of a quest the same reward window as in WoW pops up again, listing all your numerical gains (xp money etc), blatantly reminding you of their ultimately very mundane character. (As a humorous aside, all the questgivers try to lure you in with "credits", try to "bribe" you regardless of wether you are a Jedi or Bounty Hunter -Time is money friend we are all goblins in SW.) As I see it, story and quest, at least when presented this way, should have rewards that relate to the story, environmental changes, story progression and so forth. Experience and other rewards are always nice but should be handled passively, not as a numerical summary of the epic story you just partook in.

But here the limitations of the gameworld or the genre kick in, no amount of phasing can ultimately conceal the respawn of the mobs you just killed or all the other people doing that same quest 'that would change history' you just did. SW goes through great lenghts of making you forget that you play with others, the story is about you and you alone, that jedi/sith with exceptional strength in the force, that agent with special skills and so on. In the end though you are no more special then that player next to you (which SW cleverly tries to conceal by phasing out the players in the conversations you have with the questgivers) and if everyone is special then noone is. Ultimately this is a limitation of the genre, you cannot change the world singlehandedly in a game where you play together with millions of others that have to do the same thing. But instead of trying so hard to make us forget all those others, why not try to create content that fits the genre and includes other players? The classic "bring friends" comment in dungeon and epic quests becomes ironic in a context where you do not have time to make friends, being constantly asked to deal with things on your own, important mission after important mission.


The final question I ask myself personally is: what does SW add to my MMO experiences up to date? Getting caught up in the stories is certainly rewarding, it engages in a way that reminds me of my first experiences in WoW. However the story in itself is not the reward as it ultimately doesn't change the basic premise of the game and that premise doesn't differ in any way from WoW. (And, as an aside, the stories in WoW also engaged me) Once the story ends we are left with the same activities as always: pvp, heroic dungeons, raids and achievements. You could argue that this will always be, in whatever shape or form, the activities you partake in in an MMO endgame and I am inclined to agree. But there is the crux, SW doesn’t add anything new there, the gameplay is the same and arguably even of less quality then WoW in certain aspects. Too many times my skill that gets praised so high by all the npc's boils down to wars of attrition, healthbar vs healthbar without any of the nifty tricks and tactics that WoW added to fighting elites, enabling you to overcome the numerical disadvantage you had. Without that and without any active ways of preventing incoming damage the fighting in the end becomes dull, no matter how flashy the animations. SW tries to spice it up by letting you fight multiple mobs during regular questing, which tends to alleviate it a bit but its in the one on one fights where the system utterly fails.


In the process of making you feel the hero Bioware even took away an aspect that I personally enjoyed in MMO's, crafting. Yes it is there but you do none of the work, the companions do it for you, because, well, a hero can't be bothered with making a health potion now can (s)he? Aye, in the end it maybe doesnt make much of a difference whether your char performs the animation after pressing "create" or that your companion does it. But why then does it take 60 seconds to create a low level health potion without even being able to queue up crafting orders (none that I found anyway) requiring your to press "create" every 60 seconds again if you feel the need for a stack. [Edit: found out you can queue but you still have to press the create button as many times as the items you need, sloppy]. The game lacks polish, and is still bugged in several places. One of the most annoying for me right now is the fact that the friends list will not recognize certain chars even though they are on the same server. I know that every MMO starts out with bugs but that a major one is in relation to the social side for some reason seems symbolic: so much resources spent on
single player elements but the MMO side is not improved and on some points even underdeveloped/bugged. That said, some of the individual systems are intelligently designed and try to address issues that were jarring in WoW or at least smooth them over. It makes for some entertaining and engaging play time as there is a lot to discover but ultimately leaves a dry taste in the mouth. It could have been so much more, but isn't. Lets hope GW2 and TSW will set the standards for MMO's from now on. ]]> Shrandar http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forums/entry.php?2295-SW-again-an-ongoing-review SWTOR beta review from a WoW perspective http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forums/entry.php?2284-SWTOR-beta-review-from-a-WoW-perspective Sat, 03 Dec 2011 13:34:43 GMT My attempt at a 'professional' review, as 'professional' goes after only a weekend of play. Have divided it in Excellent, Good and Average. I dint really find any bad points so no category for that. Overall I was pleasantly surprised about the game, I have been highly sceptic but it won me over rather quickly :D Read why here:


The excellent:

Interactive questing

Bioware's interactive storytelling brought to the MMO genre! If you ever dreamt of playing games like Baldur's gate, Knights of the Old republic, Dragon Age or Mass Effect in a multiplayer environment then this is definitely the closest you'll get in possible wet dream scenario's. Every mission you take is an excellently voiced dialogue with the questgiver with several options of how to react, get more background, morale stances etc. These dialogues are nice cutscenes in which the gazillions of players standing around the questgiver are mostly phased out which helps tremendously with immersion. During these cutscenes the chatwindow is still available so you are never removed from the community at large or the group you are playing in. Also grouping up and doing the same conversations is well thought out, team members each get to do a random roll for the reaction they would like to give and the highest roll gets to answer, resulting in players delivering their lines in turn and giving the illusion of a party with different personalities reacting to the things being said and happening around them. (makes even a silent pug seemingly have a personality ;)) It being the Star Wars universe allows for some technical innovation so if a party member delivers a shared quest and you are not at the same spot to join in the conversation you can partake through use of a holocam.


The good:


The story
Considering that interactive storytelling with branching based on player choice is still very much a new medium, I would say that both the class stories (from the ones I have seen) and the side quests are quite good. There is still a fair amount of trope villain/good guy developments and some sidequests are basically nicely dressed up versions of the classic kill 10 rats quests. I also saw the typical could you helps us out with these nasty level 1 beasties that have been wiping whole squads of the imperial army which you then proceed to kill with a training sword and negligible health loss. That said I can see that they worked on bringing in some nice story arcs with the occasional moral gray zones that make the process of who to help and who to kill/let live a hell of a lot more interesting then clicking the accept button on the bottom of a text balloon. Its still nothing compared to a single player rpg like The Witcher series or any good book imo but the fact that this is an MMO of course also limits the impact of player choice and thus the quality of story you could possibly deliver.



Graphics/world design.
Overall, from the opening cutscene to the gameworld the graphics are imo good looking and very reminiscent of the graphics used in Knights of the Old Republic. They opted for a 'cartoony' realism but everything lives and breathes a Star Wars/Science Fiction feel with grand vista's, epic sized city environments etc. Textures are blurry at times though and the detail of your Avatar's armour and character model is not great, this being an MMO however and thus having to account for a large amount of computer specs, its understandable. Still a bit disappointing for those with the possibility of maxing everything out and having a large bit of their performance sitting idle.
The world/map design from what I have seen looked good with a fair bit of variety. They seemed a bit linear with a lot of natural 'walls' limiting your exploration but that might change at higher levels. A last thing to remark is that some area's like the Senate or the city on Corcusant are epic in size indeed but virtually void of npc's resulting in a lot of walking back and forth through relatively uninteresting environments. There is always the possibility of taxi's though or your quicktravel 'hearthstone' with a 30 minute cd that can transport you to any bindpoint on the map you have previously discovered.


Gameplay
From the promotional video's I had seen prior to playing the beta the gameplay seemed a very standard WoW hotkey affair and it is. The lower level abilities include quite a lot of instants (at least on the classes I saw) which enables more movement early on but channelled and cast time abilities enter the fray after a while which makes combat a mostly static affair of standing and spamming your rotation until either your or the npc's healthbar gives out. That being said, combat is exciting since most of the time you will not pull single mobs but groups of 4 or 5, consisting of melee and ranged opponents. Most of them are easily dispatched but some groups are blended with stronger or even elite enemies which opens up some strategic gameplay possibilities even when soloing. Overall I thought it was a very enjoyable affair with a good amount of cool moments. Your companion (more about them later) does quite a decent job in these encounters but unless you micro manage him/her/its abilities add little more to the fight then a hunters pet or a warlocks minion.
Sadly I didn't see any possibilities to slice into computer systems to disable enemy security or blow stuff up in their face as you could in KoTOR, it could have given a bit more variety as to how to deal with enemies. (edit: From what I have heard of others: depending on crafting skills there will be several optional ways to go through a dungeon, deal with mobs, create short cuts etc).

Gear/loot:
Gear comes in the same quality ranks as WoW, green blue purple and orange. Purple and orange are not limited to the highest level, you can find them early on already. The great thing is that some gear is upgradable: it contains no basic stats but only the stats of the upgrade components you put in (fx with a lightsaber, the hilt, colour crystal etc). These upgrades you can buy, create with crafting or find in loot, meaning that you could keep that piece of gear for the whole of your gaming career if you wished, properly updating it with mods and enhancements as you come across them. With the ability to also just standard swap lower level gear with higher level it might create some variety in what people choose to wear.
The loot is very much a standard affair, ranging from cash, vendortrash and gear. In the lower levels (starting area) there is an ungodly amount of junk which fills your limited bagspace at an alarming rate, its nice for money but personally I prefer a bit more variety. It picks up later though, with mods and enhancements that also drop, making looting a bit more exciting (the mob with loot has a coloured beam indicating the quality of loot dropped making sure you never miss the really good drops). Apart from gear, junk and enhancements, mobs also drop commendation tokens corresponding to the planet you are questing on, gather enough of them and you can buy a nice piece of blue gear at the commendation vendor. Quests also often give you the choice between either a token or a piece of gear, if the gear isn't better then what you have equipped you still have a nice reward. Same system applies to the dungeons where it is very much the same as in WoW with the emblems of triumph but available at all levels.



Grouping:
Not much to say here, tried it a few times, and it was fun. Didn’t really have a feel for class synergy yet of course so while fighting it more often then not resulted in rather noobish button pushing but we survived, most of the time. The shared conversations worked very well as mentioned earlier and the ability to see and help out in each others class story was nice (though you couldn’t influence the dialogue, there you were merely the spectator). I tried the first flashpoint (dungeon) and it was long with a new objective popping up when completing another and dialogues prolonging the experience. While it was very nice to have a story with the dungeon I wonder how well that works out while running it for a 10th time fx to farm for gear or marks (you might not have to though, not sure) but that counts for a lot of the content. Overall a very enjoyable experience!


The average:


Talent trees/ skill training
First thing I must say that the talent trees in potential give a lot of variety. There are 8 classes and each class has the ability to choose from one of two possible advanced classes at level 10. In the example of The Jedi consular (which I played most during the beta) that means that you can choose between jedi sage (healer/mage damage type) or jedi shadow (a rogue damage type with defensive capabilities). These two advanced classes each have 3 separate skill trees that are distinct to that advanced class (there is possibly some shared abilities in there but not at first glance). So in terms of WoW this would effectively mean 16 different classes. Seeing that within the advanced class you can either spec for damage or healing or damage or defense and respec when needed there is a lot that you can play around with. Advanced classes are a binding choice atm, once chosen you cannot try the other one. This means you could replay the same class twice for a potentially very different combat experience.
Sounds all very interesting, why then put it under average? Well two things mainly. First, glancing over the talent trees I saw a lot of what WoW nowadays calls filler talents, 2% more crit,damage or healing on this ability kind of thing. I didn't make a deep study of the higher tiers but as a first impression it wasn't very exciting. Secondly there is the classic back and forth to the trainer at every level often finding you can only buy an upgrade of an existing spell or ability, not very thrilling. I do not agree with every development WoW made in regards to the talent tree but the scaling of learned abilities with level and a trimmed down talent tree with more interesting abilities is something I would like to see in any new MMO, the system here feels almost archaic. Obviously opinions will differ.



UI
This one I am not sure about whether to put under good or average. I put it here mostly since I have always been a big fan of ui customisation. In WoW as soon as add ons were available (hotbar extensions etc) I used them. Admittingly it tended to go overboard in WoW sometimes but I liked that the option was there. SWTOR has no such thing, yes you can hide elements of the ui and move the chat window but that is as far as the customisation goes from what I have seen. Macros' are also not in so some of the conveniences we got used to in WoW are sorely missing here. The chat window is also basic, only giving the option to decide which channels you want to see in a given tab, but no way to colour code them. There is an option to create a custom channel but didn't see it in the list of channels after I created it and was not able to select it for communicating. This is probably just a bug though or my own stupidity. I have read somewhere they would add a lot of customisation soon after release so this might end up being a non issue and probably already is for a lot of people that never used any addons to start with.
That said there are quite a lot of options in the preferences menu that you can customise to your liking, like detailed tooltips (detailing exactly what enhancements you have in your gear fx), comparative tooltips for your own and companions gear. After a bit of tinkering I was able to create a ui that pretty much did what I needed it to do and have a smooth gameplay experience.
The map is nice, fading when you walk so you can see where you are going while walking. There are also several options for marking what you want to see on the map and minimap (vendors, trainers and so forth). If in a party you can see the partymembers questgoals on the map also, in a different colour from your own.


Crafting and gathering:
Only initial impressions here since I didn’t go all to deep in to it. Each char can choose up to 3 professions (or crew skills as they are called in TOR). Two of those are gathering missions and 1 crafting or three gathering if you so choose. There is a lot of variety in crew skills and in possible items to be crafted. The change TOR brings compared to WoW is mostly in the convenience area, crafting and gathering is not something your char will be doing, its your crew (companions, up to 3 per character) that will be doing the hard work. You can send your crew on gathering missions, this will cost money and a certain amount of time, when ordered to do so they will disappear from your side (I only had 1 companion so far) and return after the allotted time with some resources corresponding to the mission you send them on. Your skill will also go up after they have returned. You can also gather in the field but clicking on the resource will make your companion do the work.
Crafting you also leave to your companion, after gathering the resources you click on create and your companion goes off to do his job, returning after a while with the crafted item and the corresponding skill up. Some of your companions will have a bonus on a particular crafting or gathering skill so choosing who to send is a must here. Basically you will never have to stop to do anything not fighting/questing related any more. I must admit that it is convenient but as I always liked crafting it also feels a bit sad that I have no possibility to do it myself.
As far as the recipe's/crafted items goes it seems like you will be creating lots of useless greens to skill up, like in WoW, difference is that you can reverse engineer these items to get some of the mats back and the possibility for a improved version of the recipe that you made. This hasn’t happened to me but I only made 3 or 4 items. That there is a possibility is to discover recipe's is nice though and a reward for dedicated crafters.



Companions:
Again only initial impressions .I got my first and only companion around level 9, he was introduced through the class story. I got to see and speak with him basically from level 1 so after he joined me I felt some sort of bond. Yeah sue me, I am a sucker for rp :p. After joining though he fell strangely silent only uttering oneliners once in a while, that, while related to his story, basically not amounted to more then the Who summoned me comments from the WoW warlock minion. Coming from Dragon Age and Mass Effect where each companion has a personality, banter and so on, this felt like poor man’s version. This effect is only heightened by the fact that they basically act as your servants or slaves, gathering your mats, crafting, and even selling your grey items if you so desire.
The affection gain through decisions you make during quests seemed rather random to me. There is a description of his personality in the codex (game encyclopedia that fills up as you discover things) which lists his likes and dislikes but still I couldn’t really find any discernible logic. Hilariously he even managed to like me more when I made a decision with him not present to notice it. Admittedly this kind of odd behaviour was also present in Dragon Age but this felt multiplied by 10. In solo combat without any micro managing he did relatively well as I mentioned before, in dungeons though he seemed rather useless but it might be that I should have infested in his gear a bit more.


Light side/Dark side
During questing you gain dark/light points based on your decisions, am I rude, benevolent merciless etc.? Now I don't have an extensive knowledge of Star Wars lore and I never been a big a fan of one dimensional moral barometers but I guess for the Jedi the light or dark alignement makes sense, either you are a paragorn of good or just an evil mother****ing dark Jedi. You will still be a dark mother****ing republic Jedi though since a faction change based on alignment choices isn't in. But the possibility of making 'dark' choices is nice to have anyway for rp and immersion. That said some lightsabers are only available for you to buy with a certain dark or light side rating so the points also act as a kind of currency (but do not get used up while buying stuff). Being consequent in your choices will pay off, though 'rewarding' alignment in that way for me kind of defeated the point of rping your decisions based on the idea of your character. The lightsabers are not a must have however since you can get comparable items through upgrading or crafting so a more neutral Jedi is not necessarily gimping him or herself. Light or dark side ranks are also used for buying more cosmetic related items.
The alignment, while making sense for Jedi's felt a bit akward for the other classes. I am not exactly sure what it means when a bountyhunter moves more to the dark side, since he doesn't use the force. Yeah, ok, nitpicking here :D


Character creation:
While satisfying, its not really anything to write home about either. I personally don’t really mind that I don’t get to choose how long my nose is or the exact shape of my eyelashes. While having more options is always nice for those wanting to use it I don't spend that much time on my character in general. I do find the options that are available rather lacking nonetheless. This is mostly out of technical reasons from what I understand regarding armour clipping and the like but Bioware chose only to have the humanoid model so all races have the same body and body size shape (4 options) is the same for all races to. The thing to distinguish yourself with is your face and here there are quite a lot of options available as Asuntil mentioned in her review. Problem is however that as soon as ppl start wearing helmets this difference is also gone. To top it off every race has the same dance and the same set of emotes. Might seem insignificant and for a lot of people it probably also is but its hard to make your char stand out from the crowd (or look different at least) in an MMO to start with, trimming down on options here is imo not a very good idea, not something I am overly distraught about either though.



Overall Verdict: Is it a game that changes the MMO genre compared to WoW as the most prevalent cultural reference point? I dont really think so, much of the social sides of gameplay are much the same as WoW, the questing for the most part can easily be done alone (certainly with the addition of an active companion) and there are harder mobs outdoor that require grouping if you would feel the need to tackle them as its not nessecary to do so to progress in your levels steadily. And ofcourse there are the instanced dungeons and raids at endgame.
That said though, SW never claimed to be different than WoW, they even admitted to keeping prety close to WoW's design philosophy. They made some huge improvements in quest presentation through dialogue which does make a huge difference to how the game feels compared to Warcraft, it begs the question however how long this *newness* lasts once you have seen and lived through the story. I am dissapointed in SW for not bringing the MMO any further but in its own right its a very enjoyable game. ]]> Shrandar http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forums/entry.php?2284-SWTOR-beta-review-from-a-WoW-perspective