The Glade 4.0

I didn't intend to phrase that as it being a bad thing. I like the WoW model, I wouldn't of spent so many years playing WoW if I hadn't. Its got similar mechanics that you know & love from WoW, but with a Star Wars wrapper. The game works quite well for what its seemingly trying to be.

That said, there's not a whole lot that seems "new" to me. I may of had my hopes too high, and that's entirely on me. I was looking for something to push MMO's into a new direction, a new generation so to speak. That for my personal taste, will fall to Guild Wars 2 based on what I've seen from that game so far.

If you know & love how WoW works, but want that amount of polish, functionality and experience but with a Star Wars theme, then TOR is definitely going to be a great game to play.

I never played wow so hopefully this will be all new too.

I think the point to take away is that SWTOR shares enough DNA with mainstream MMOs to feel familiar to most on-line gamers, when considering the underlying mechanics. I've never played wow either, but its pretty easy for me to slide right into SWTOR based on past MMO experience.

I expect the gameplay to be similar. However, where my expectations are higher, is I also expect the game to involve the player characters more in the apparent plot. In WoW, for the most part, the world goes on, things happen around the players, with or without them. (This was briefly improved during Lich King when the world changed drasticly based on the Wrathgate quest, but such instances were few and far between, and eventually, they removed even those changes.) In Warcraft, you're more of a bystander than a participant, and I tired of it.

What SWTOR promises is to make each individual player feel as if they truly are at the center of the intrigue and plot going on in the galaxy -- an MMO that plays out like a single player RPG. I don't know if they can pull it off, but if they can, I will be very happy.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Feels like a hybrid of WoW, Mass Effect and KOTOR to me.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

It's nothing like WoW in space. Aside from talents, they basically have nothing else in common.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

The mere fact that it is an MMO that isn't entirely instanced like Guildwars means that you are still going to have a problem.

"If you complete this task, Talya, then you will receive the rare and unique adaegan crystal for your lightsaber... the only one of it's kind!"

And then, you are going to run into many, many, many other Jedi whose lightsaber glows brightly of the same hue as yours. Because, they too have already been there and done that long before you.

It's the double-edged sword of playing a game with other people who also have the same story as you. This is precisely one of the biggest reasons I am looking forward to Skyrim more than any other game this year.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Leet beta spoilerz info!

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

This is cross-posted from a thread on the World of Darkness MMO that's being developed. It's relevant here, with regards to SWtOR's storyline quests.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

EQ was one of the most memorable games ever, although it was probably because of the people I played with.

One of many main tanks I worked with over the years (Grum, for those of you guys who hung out with us) once described how the promise of EQ was your own personal Lord of the Rings or Sword of Shannara, and how that illusion got shattered with fifty people crowded around a dragon. It was a lot like the argument Numbuk just raised about the Jedi lightsaber crystal.

I was keenly aware that there were other people who had some of the same phat lewt that I did. (Although there did get to be a point where those people were very small in number). There were other people who had killed the same monsters. At the same time, they weren't me. They didn't have a reputation as one of the team of superheroes who bailed you out of a bad Fear break.

Having a single-player storyline that makes you the center of all the intrigue in the universe is no different from a regular single-player game that plays out like an interactive storybook, and at the end of the day, you're not making any decisions on your own. You're making the writer's decisions and seeing what the writer had planned. That's cool, but it's not an MMO. You don't go and tell your friends about that. Now, some jackass trains you. Do you run? Do you fight? That's a real decision. If you stand and fight, you've got an epic battle on your hands. That's your Black Gates of Mordor. Sometimes you lose those, and it sucks. Sometimes you win, and it's **** awesome.

Lots of people in EQ fought and killed Lord Nagafen, Trakanon, Dozekar the Vindicator, and so forth. I'm pretty sure nobody had random mobs from the castle of Velketor's Labyrinth wandering past their group because **** Deirdre thought it would be cute to pull Velketor to the zone entrance.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I remember watching my parents try to do Fear with the guild and it would turn into a catastrophe almost every time. And then when everyone was naked waiting to be rezzed, there was that level 30 - something female necromancer NPC that would keep respawning in the cave giving everyone grief.

I still remember cancelling going to a baseball game with my mom when I was younger because I was raiding Fear for the first time that morning. I didn't mean to skip the game, but the "raid" turned into a 6 hour corpse run... of course

its funny, the only time we wiped doing PoFear was when 4 of us tried to clear it at level 70. (bad pull)

My memories of fear was my first run with my new guild and being selected for the honor of taking the first DT by .... whatever that guys name was. Staying up til 3 in the morning, I honestly forget if we took him down or not but I seem to recall we did.

Also remember the day not long after I got to be on the break team. That was cool.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Of all the fun years of gaming I've had in my life, and even though it eventually turned sour because I stuck with it for too long, I still say the early Everquest days were probably the peak of gaming wonderment for me.

I'm interested in pre-ordering this game. Where are people preordering from? If I want to get my hands on the box the same day, Best Buy would be my best bet. But, if I preorder, there's that early access thing. So I should already be able to download/install the game before release, right? So it doesn't really matter when I get the physical box, does it?

What do you think?

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Typically, Moo, the way pre-orders' early access works is you get a code ahead of time when you pre-order. Make sure you do so if that's your goal. The pre-order code gives you early access, and then there's usually a short grace window post-launch where a pre-order code is still enough to continue logging in. After however long the grace period is, your account goes inactive until you enter the "real" code found in the box copy.

I've seen games with no grace period (though that was early in the "early access!!!" days, and grace periods ranging from 3-10 days.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

So, if I preorder from Amazon with the option to get it release day, I can install the game early and just enter the CD key when the box arrives?

edit: I preordered through Amazon.

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Oh, I've said it before and I'll say it again: Receiving my Totemic Helm was far more epic and satisfying than any achievement, any drop, any item I've earned in *any game* since.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Press had a limited NDA lift starting today. Lots of articles out there if you care to peruse them. I know Massively, IGN, Gamespy, RPS, and I think Joystiq all have multi-part coverage.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I pre ordered through Best Buy. Got one working code and one code that already been used. YMMV

Sorry, forgot to reply here. Assuming Amazon had a valid pre-order code left to give you at the time of purchase, yes.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I preordered through Amazon, got the code immediately, and registered it with Bioware with no problem.

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Cool. I've seen reports that various outlets are either sold out of codes or are (improperly) recycling old codes.

EA made the novel decision to limit quantities of pre-order codes to better throttle server load during the early access.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades