Bioware's new Star Wars MMO

It would be fair to say that I am eagerly anticipating the recently announced Star Wars: The Old Republic. It has Bioware at the helm, which alone merits it a great deal of attention. But there is a lot more. Bioware is shooting for a much more immersive, story-driven MMO, without the menial "kill 50 boars, then bring me 15 vulture gizzards" quests that have become integral to the modern MMORPG paradigm. Essentially, it sounds like they're shooting for KOTOR, but in a persistent, multiplayer world. If they pull it off, they could have a top-tier MMO on their hands, one that may even (dare I say it) rival WoW.

There are a lot of juicy details circulating on various gaming news websites (several of which you can find over to the right), so I'm not going to bother repeating them all here, but there are a few that I think bear some rampant, almost completely unfounded speculation:

-NPC companions: This is one of the biggest things that intrigues me about the game. Right now, all we know is that you will have several customizable companions available as your character advances, but that you can only have one with you at a time. This certainly raises some serious possiblities for storytelling, with the trademark Bioware romance coming immediately to mind. A big weakness with most MMOs is that you lack any real connection to the game world, and thus the story. These companions could provide that missing link. Plus, being able to corrupt a noble jedi into a twisted sith as he fights by your side would be fun, if nothing else.

It would be really neat to see an influence system a la NWN2, which could perhaps be tied to in-game benefits. For instance, Companion A could have conections with the government of a particular system, allowing access to quests and special armor not otherwise available, but A will only put in a good word for somebody she trusts and can vouch for in good faith. While Companion B might have a black market contact that could get you a sweet hookup on some illegal weapons, but only if you're willing to turn on both A and B.

The potential for soloing is also pretty sweet, as you could select a companion with strengths that compliment your weaknesses, and it could add a new layer of depth to PvP, similar to Guild Wars hero battles. And similar to GW heroes, these NPCs should add more depth to character customization, always a good thing in my book.

-Other Classes: Right now, all that has been announced is the obligatory jedi and sith. This begs the question: why would I play anything else? Figuring out a way to balance the various classes while still maintaining the necessary badassery of jedi/sith raises some interesting options: will Bioware provide some sort of specialization system, limiting these characters to being good with their lightsabers, or good with the force, or average at both? Or perhaps there will be a class system similar to Mass Effect, with a few primary archetypes (melee specialist, force-user, tech-specialist, etc.), with jedi/sith being a hybrid combination. This could also pave the way for other interesting hybrids: non-jedi/sith force-users, who stick to blasters and other forms of ranged combat would be interesting to play, for instance. And as for the other classes, the potential seems endless. Specialists in both ranged combat and technology seem like shoe-ins, with a potential for non-lightsaber-wielding melee specialists, non-jedi/sith force users, and hybrids of all the above.

One interesting thing will be how Bioware handles healers. How powerful and prominent will healing be? Will there just be some weak HoTs that get tacked on to a few classes, with character mitigation picking up the slack, or will there be dedicated healers with a full arsenal of abilities? And who will heal? Jedi seem like a pretty obvious candidate, being the only ones with anything akin to magic, and the lore generally gives them pretty potent healing abilities. But a more tech-focused character, armed with various medical kits might also work. Or Bioware could take a really radical step, and not have any healing (or perhaps just some limited self-healing for a few classes). This would make things very interesting indeed, forcing a much more conservative style of combat while allowing for some of the more spectacular jedi abilities (deflecting blaster bolts isn't nearly as powerful when you have no armor and can't be healed up between the hits that do get through).


However, overall, I am still only cautiously optimistic about the game's prospects. For one, it is still in the very early stages, and it could get canceled or severely redesigned between now and release. Also, it has the potential to simply flop, and in more ways that I can count. And a poor release could end up killing it, AoC-style. Quite simply, there is a lot that can go wrong with any game, but much more so with an MMO, where the temptation is to release ASAP and fix it later.

But still, I think this is the first genuinely innovative MMORPG in the post-WoW era that has a real shot at success. I hope it can deliver.

The End of the World (of Warcraft)

It has been taken as an article of faith for the last few years that Blizzard's MMORPG juggernaut is unstoppable. With (at last count) 10 million active subscriptions, and a second expansion pack due next month, I'd wager that the titan could run strong for another year on inertia alone. For some reason, WoW's success has a sort of aura about it, as if, buried deep in the recesses of the code, there is a subliminal dispenser of some sort of brain heroin. The real reason, of course, is that Blizzard just cranked out another Blizzard game. Their attention to detail, and their ability to create enduring games that appeal to a broad playerbase virtually guaranteed that WoW would be a hit.

But WoW will not stay this big forever, even despite having the seemingly omnipotent Blizzard at the helm. All games fade away, this is fact.

"But," you might be thinking, "no game has even come close to destroying WoW, nothing could possibly take it on!" You would be correct. Just like previous empires that seemed invincible, this one's seeds of destruction will be sown from within by the very people that compose it.

Already it can be seen with the PvE vs. PvP debate. These two disciplines, once linked by the requirement of high-end raid gear, have now separated into two warring factions, each asserting in a cacophony of forum posts that one is somehow actively working to destroy the other. A similar fissure has long ago appeared between the so-called "casuals" and the "hardcore". And among these factions are almost countless sub-factions, divided by class or race or a myriad of other factors, each one shrieking out in unison for more. More dungeons, more maps, more rewards, more buffs, more nerfs, and all of it done exclusively to their own desires.

The fact is that Blizzard cannot keep up with all of this, at least not without sacrificing quality. Balance changes rushed out the door in a vain attempt to placate angry players, ever vigilant with their calculations that show exactly how horrible their class/race/faction/spec/hair style is, how much better everyone else has it. And there has been a dramatic departure from universally enjoyed content like battlegrounds and the old 20-man raids. Instead, we get closely tailored content that its small target audience will enjoy and all others will view with disinterest or disdain. But even this is not enough, no. Lest they run out of content and start angrily chirping at mother Blizzard again, artificial barriers must be put in place to slow progression. Rep grinds, personal ratings, random loot, point grinds, badge grinds, massive gear treadmills, hard barriers to instance progression that are removed with time. All of this detracts from the fun, and builds animosity for those other bastards who caused this problem with their selfish desire for more. If only Blizzard would just ignore those tiny minorities and focus on us, their true customer base, the drivers of their success, their whole raison d'etre! We deserve more, are entitled to it. They do not, are not.





(breathe)

Eventually, niche games will swoop in. We already have the first, with the arrival of WAR, aimed at those of us who enjoyed vanilla WoW's mix of battleground and open-world PvP. There will be more. Each will latch on to one or two of these segments, siphoning off half a million players here, another million there. The combined force of this parasitic onslaught will slowly bleed Blizzard's behemoth away, until only the die-hard WoW fans, the hardcore casual solo raiders who love to gank in arenas across Aezeroth remain.

At that point, I just might renew my subscription.

Get Over Yourselves

My WoW account still has until mid-November before it expires, so I've been trolling around the forums (mostly my old realm forums, but also some of the class forums). Just today, the latest crop of self-centered whiners has popped up in the paladin forums. This whining is a tradition that has a long and proud history in WoW, starting way back when angry warriors flooded a server with level 1 alts and crashed it. Lately, the whiners have been expressing their dissatisfaction with balancing changes (some of them made on a beta, no less) by making the typical assortment of "account canceled" and other whine threads. Then on Saturday, the moderators made a pass through to clean out the crap (I don't know why they bother, but more power to them for trying). Shortly afterward, gems like these started raining out of already swollen tear ducts:

"it would be cool if you stopped deleting my post pointing out blizzard just pulled a blatant bait and switch scam. 3.0 got many to resubscribe/hold on til wotlk, now they nerf paladins all across the board (not just ret) just in time that wotlk will bring many of them back with hopes of rerolling a DK

hide behind your "online content subject to change" tagline, you are still scumbags when it comes to customer service"


"Nothing better to solve a rush of "civil disobedience" than tactics that belong in an Aldous Huxley novel.

1984 must've been a typo."


"Why are you deleting just the posts of people who are upset about the nerfs but yet you do not delete %#!*@**s who come into this forum trolling and fanning the flames? That just shows you do not give a rats ass about the paladin community."

Shut the fuck up and get over yourselves. This kind of selfish whiny bitching is gradually killing the game (more on that Tuesday!), and you totally wipe out any respectability for your position by comparing a deleted post to censorship by a totalitarian regime. You have no free-speech on a privately owned message board, and all your tears were preventing any sort of reasonable discussion from occurring. It'd be nice if Blizzard's moderators would hand out bans for this kind of crap, but just deleting them does a massive service to anyone with a brain who was reading the forums. It wouldn't be so bad if these people would actually quit, but apparently most of them exist to whine, and so they keep paying and posting, their threats growing emptier the more they try to become self-made martyrs.

This is why I'm glad WAR doesn't have official forums. The community is bad enough without a giant, official echo chamber for all the scrubs and children to spout their drivel.

More WAR Stories

I finally hit Tier 3, and all I have to say is that Tor Anroc kicks ass. I know a lot of people hate it, but the unique terrain really shows the potential for WAR combat; positioning and situational awareness is absolutely essential in TA, you can't just mindlessly zerg like you could in lower tiers. The lava is probably a bit over the top, but with my pitiful damage output, being able to just insta-pwn people is a refreshing change of pace. I hope more scenerios and especially open RvR areas incorporate this kind of terrain (sans lava, perhaps), it has simply taken PvP to a new level for me.

Also, the t3 keeps are a lot more interesting. They have an outer wall surrounding the keep, making a keep siege that much more intense. It really becomes a long, hard slog to take a defended keep in t3, and my only gripe is that the respawn timer on keep doors seemed a bit too short: by the time my pug warband had penetrated the inner gate, the outer gate was back up.

Unfortunately, keep sieges really show my computer's age. I get maybe 3-4 FPS, and when I'm in a full warband, that drops down to about .3-.5. Some of that, especially the warband drop, could be mod-related, and I wouldn't be surprised if mythic's mediocre coding also shares some blame (With my current settings, the game looks about WoW-quality, and I got a consistent 25+ FPS even in large, heated battles on WoW), but mostly I think my machine has hit the end of its lifespan.

If only I had the money to upgrade it...

Playing Halo With Girls

Women who play "serious" video games are, regrettably, rare. Sure, you find the occasional person who manages to kick ass without a Y chromosome (My old WoW guild leader was one such example), but given that half the population of this planet is female, you'd expect to find more.

Part of this is gender socialization, of course. Video games are for boys, and that is heavily re-enforced through testosterone-fueled design and marketing. But after sitting down and playing Halo with some wimminfolk, I think I may have identified another culprit: Modern games are hard.

This may seem a strange statement, especially referring to Halo. After all, Halo is the quintessential pick-up video game at all kinds of social gatherings. But then a friend of mine amazed me with her total inability to run and shoot at the same time. This forced me to realize that there is a lot of complexity in Halo that we as males are simply used to.

At the basic level, the game requires you to use two analog sticks and 10 buttons as if they were a mere extension of your body- a skill that took most of us many years to master, by starting with a simple NES/SNES controller and gradually moving up as new systems arrived.

On the next level, Halo requires knowledge of basic infantry combat: things like cover, fire discipline, where to aim your gun, which types of guns are good in certain situations, basic maneuvers like flanking, etc. etc. As with the controller, these are not things that you can intuitively know, they must be learned through practice.

And then there is the top level. Skills like aiming and how to move when under fire or knowledge of things like map layouts and blast radii of explosive weapons. Most of us have already mastered the the lower levels, and so it is only these challenges that we think about. But the female newcomer is likely to be overwhelmed by most or all of this complexity at once. Some persevere, but most will just go hang out with the douchebag playing sugary emotional songs on his guitar (at least he doesn't give them shit for not being able to instantly master complex tasks).

Perhaps there is a reason why simpler games, like Goldeneye for the N64, continue to be so popular; they are worlds easier to pick up and start playing, while still being very fun. I wonder if such a game could succeed in today's market, or if most non-gamers are just permanantly turned off to anything more complex than flash puzzle games.

Warhammer Online: A Partial Review

Note: Right now, I'm intending this to be the first of a series, with a final post once I've spent some time at endgame, and perhaps one or two in between.

I've already written two articles on WAR, so for this review I'll try not to duplicate anything and stick to topics that I haven't covered.

First off, the good. WAR has done a solid job of delivering a fun, approachable, PvP-oriented game. The game is very easy to pick up; no tutorial or instruction manual is needed, you can learn all the essentials just by playing the first few levels. The combat pacing is very Guild Wars-esque: you will be doing things very rapidly, but the actual course of a fight will take a long time to unfold. The game manages to capture the slogging feel of a giant medieval battle even with only 20 total participants. In fact, the entire atmosphere is one of constant war. Zones have a soundtrack of cannon fire and the distant cries of battle, and from the second you enter the world, there are soldiers trying to fight off the enemy. The world feels dynamic and alive, and it sets aside moral complexities and uneasy truces- it's genocide or bust for the game's three racial pairings.

The classes are also pretty well done. Balance is still pretty rough (more on that later), but each class has some sort of unique mechanic that, while mirrored on the opposing faction, is quite different from any other class you will find on your side. My experience thus far has been mainly with three classes: The swordmaster, the archmage, and the disciple of khaine. I've already talked about the swordmaster's and the disciple's mechanics. The archmage delivers another interesting, albeit less gameplay-defining, mechanic: high magic. High magic is essentially a way to boost healing spells by casting damage spells, and vice-versa. In some cases, it can deliver a similar level of fun and satisfaction as soul essence and blade dancing, rewarding you for switching roles often. But frequently, it falls flat, and that brings me to the bad.

High magic is one example of the many "almost"s in WAR. On the surface, it seems like a great idea: buff damage through healing, so that healers aren't forced to healbot. But when the chips are down, it just isn't worth the time and AP investment to stop healing, no matter how powerful that nuke might get.

Another example is the open RvR. This is sold as being the meat of the game, but it is not nearly as active as you expect. Two factors contribute to this: lag and rewards. WAR's code is just not up to the task of having 50+ people involved in a keep siege, and even on top-of-the line machines, these battles can slow to a crawl. The result is that people rarely attack a defended keep in force, and most keep sieges I've done have involved a total of 10-20 people tops. Fun, perhaps, but hardly the epic battles we were sold. The rewards are also an issue; scenerios give much more reward per time invested. However, as more people realize that the gameplay itself is the reward, this issue should dissappear as gearheads go back to WoW or some other upgrade treadmil.

Class balance, while good enough for a launch game, is still not where it needs to be in the long term. Many mirrored versions of the same class are clearly superior to their counterparts, and within archetypes, there are a few classes that stand out as being much better overall. Also, the squig herder, magus, shadow warrior, and engineer, are noticeably weaker than all the others, and this has resulted in an almost nonexistent population of these classes. They aren't so horribly gimped that they can't be effective, but the power differences are still significant enough to be problematic.

The last big "almost" is the world itself. As I mentioned, it certainly feels dynamic, but so far it is actually quite static. Zones change control on a daily basis, and yet nothing else seems to change in the world. No new territory is gained, no new NPCs or the like appear, and there is not even some sort of recruiter asking players for their assistance in claiming another zone still in the grips of the enemy. I was really hoping for more, but perhaps the higher tiers will deliver.

Mythic is promising a solution (or at least progress on one) to these issues and many more, along with two of the four cut classes, with their 1.1 update. But there is one problem that no patch will be able to fix, and that is the community. Already, there is a noticeable population of whiners and other sorts of people that are impossible to satisfy. But game companies try to anyway, and the results of addressing their often dubious concerns or implementing their greedy desires can be disastrous, and even if they are ignored, they still create a pervasive negativeness that can drive away newcomers and current players alike.

At the time of writing, people's free months are starting to end. This is WAR's first test, but it could be a blessing in disguise if the whiners jump ship. And the next trial is just around the corner: Wrath of the Lich King drops November 13th. Age of Conan established that companies have 1-2 months tops to fix major problems in their games, and that's without an impending WoW expansion. While WAR was released in much better shape, it is still in dire need of polish. Hopefully Mythic can deliver, because I think there is a very solid game here, just waiting to be released from the bonds of "almost".

I Really Want to Love EVE Online

Really, I do. It has all the makings of an MMO that I could meet at a party, have a few drinks with, then go elope to Vegas that same night and beat the odds to live Happily Ever After™: A cool sci-fi setting (I'm really sick of all the medieval themed MMOs...), a unique and awesome character advancement system, a top-notch community all living on the same server, and an endgame that is entirely player-driven. Plus, spaceships.

But somehow, developer CCP has managed to make the worst early/mid-game that I have ever experienced. Grinding the same 5 missions over and over for money to buy a bigger ship and faction to allow you to grind a new set of 5 missions for money to buy an even bigger ship and faction to... It's like they took the average but drinkable liquor that is WoW and distilled it down to raw gutrot.

To be fair, it is improving. My first attempt several years ago was abandoned after the terrible tutorial dropped me out in space without a clue. My more recent forray, aided by a vastly improved tutorial that placed me on solid footing, lasted about two months. Perhaps if I had stuck it out a few more, I might be happily involved with some aspect of the endgame. But then again, maybe that's just me making apologies that I shouldn't.

WAR Stories

Since open beta, I've been playing this game on and off. Of course, arguably the damn thing is still in open beta, but that seems to be the way with PC games these days, especially MMOs. Despite the memory leaks and the general lack of polish however, the game has still provided the essential fun.

First off, as I said, I've been playing on and off. But unlike the other MMOs I've played (WoW, EVE, and AoC) WAR doesn't seem to mind that I may not log in for several days at a time, or that the game has been out for almost a month and I'm still only rank 19. No, it says, don't feel rushed. Take your time and enjoy the leveling process at whatever pace you desire. I have previously praised Guild Wars' leveling system as an ideal, but I think I am more impressed with WAR's. It doesn't just hide a grind to cap behind something more fun than killing boars, it makes every level of play worthwhile and enjoyable in its own right. The game could end at my current rank, and I'd still hand EA my money each month.

As for the raw gameplay, I've already had some cool experiences. Playing as a swordmaster, the high elf tank, I've really had to work at learning a new way of playing. Tanks can actually protect their allies in WAR, with abilities that reduce enemy damage output, increase allied avoidance, and split damage. But you aren't just a pet rottweiler for the clothies, you also carry some nice front-line abilities like knockbacks, spell interrupts, and just generally being a pain in the ass that won't die. You have to decide whether to hang back and protect your backline or get up front and lead the charge, whether you should grab a flag or if another player would hold it better with you guarding them.

Then there is the swordmaster's class mechanic, blade dancing. Like the Guild Wars assassin, the bulk of your attacks are chained together into a three-part combo, with moves restricted to one stage of the chain. But as compensation for only being able to use 2/3rds of your attacks at a given time (the starter moves are always available), the final move in the chain has no cost, in addition to being the most potent. Throw all this together, and you have a class that takes some serious finesse to play well, and rewards that finesse with allies that stay alive. It is very satisfying when you link up your dance just right, so that you are always in the proper stage at just the right time to use the move you need to get the effect you want.

Plus, pushing the limits of how long you can survive guarding a flag solo, just as "Don't Stop Believing" comes out of nowhere on Pandora is pretty kickass.

Help, I'm Trapped in Dawn of War!

I've never really been one for RTSs. I'm the guy that sets the difficulty on easy, builds up a massive army of one really cool unit, then wipes out the helpless CPU. I just don't have the micromanagement chops to really do well with the genre, and no title save the legendary Starcraft has held my attention for more than a month.

But I cannot stop playing Dawn of War to save my wretched life. Ever since it first hit shelves, I've been returning to the 41st century intermitantly, like some sort of junkie who can't quite kick his habit. I can't help it. I want to stay clean, but it seems everywhere I turn, Relic is pushing a new expansion pack, with a new campaign or new race that is worth the relapse.

Part of it is the setting. The Warhammer 40k universe is my favorite alternate universe ever created, combining high technology with the arcane in a galactic dystopia. But mostly, the game just has a kickass atmosphere. I can think of no other RTS where combat is so visceral, a veritable orgy of blood and bolter rounds, with squads shouting battle cries and elite units tossing weaker ones halfway across the screen.

I think if an MMOFPS were to combine the 40k IP with the same feel of Relic's opus, I would very likely waste away in my computer chair from gaming bliss-induced malnutrition. I can think of few better ways to go.