re: #247 Renaissance_Man

I have some reservations about TOR, despite the fact that it is, in fact, freaking Star Wars, and there is something about the sound of a lightsabre powering up that stirs the animal soul that pulses in the breast of man.

…

I’m better now. Anyway, my main concern is that the epic nature of the Jedi and Sith (and I use the word epic in its original meaning, as opposed to the modern meaning of ‘rather nice’) may not translate well to a MMO. It obviously translated well to KOTOR, the best RPG game of all time. But that is a single player, and the dynamic of MMOs is very different. A MMO generally has players being relatively anonymous parts of the world - some try to give an individual more meaning and impact on the world, but by its very nature any real impact a player has must be limited in scope.

Immersion is also always an issue - in cartoony worlds like WoW or worlds where there is no long tradition of IP, immersion is perhaps not so important. But the IP of Star Wars is far and away the main attraction here. Furthermore, the anonymity and relative unimportance of any individual player protects immersion - when you see random idiots being idiots, you can always ignore them comfortably in part because they are relatively unimportant. But I’m not sure it will be so easy to ignore Lol’I Pwnd’U the Jedi Master dueling Omgwtfr0xx0rz the Sith Lord.

Some reviews of TOR have made the comment that it seems to be much more of a MSPRPG (Massive Single Player RPG), where interaction with other players is a vaguely optional sort of extra. That may well be preferable to diluting the awesomeness by interacting with the 99 out of 100 basement-dwelling mouthbreathing hambeasts that give the 1 out of 100 other players a bad name. But I’m not sure it will necessarily make for an especially awesome MMO recipe.

Dude… well said.

The reason that I think Old Republic will be awesome is that it is Bioware and they have consistently in the course of developer interviews been harping on the vary points you bring up. If anyone can pull off the incredibly ambitions goals that the devs are talking about, it is Bioware. Since they made Baldur’s Gate, Kotor, Mass Effect and Dragon Age, I am willing to at least give them the benefit of the doubt.

All dialogue is fully voice acted for example. All characters make choices that will effect their personal stories permanently. The game is set up so that different choices can put different player characters at odds. Each character class has its own story arc.

As to epicness, a full galaxy at war with legions of Sith fighting the legions of Jedi is pretty dan epic IMHO and in the original sense of the word.