BW's first big mistake - the Era.

[CorellianWannabe]

So as I'm approaching level 50 with my first toon, I must say I'm disappointed with the level of "Star Warsyness" of this game. I would assume that BW and EA were willing to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at a game is the huge base of people out there who are Star Wars fans. Any by "Star Wars fans", I mean people who watched & liked the original trilogy.

 

For example, why does this Darth Malgus character show up all over the place? How many more people would play this game if it was Darth Vader?

 

So far, the only planets I've really liked are Tatooine and Hoth, and Alderaan. Before playing this game, I had never heard of Taris, or Nar Shadda, or Belsavis, or any of those other planets.

 

Okay, I sort of remember the Twi'lek dancers, so that's kind of cool. But who are the Mirakula, or whatever they're called? And those Chiss, or the Sith?

 

I'm sure lots of people who are familiar with the "Extended Universe" get all excited for references to Darth Revan, but the average person doesn't. Darth Revan wasn't worth a $100 million MMORPG. Darth Vader would be.

 

They had to set it before the first trilogy because players want their glowsticks.

[BlazingShadow]

Are you kidding? He was in every single cinematic leading up to the game's release.

 

He kills Satele Shan's Master, Kao Den Darach. He kills Darth Vindican, his own Master. He leads the assault on the Jedi Temple and destroys it. He kills Master Ven Zallow, the leader of the Temple. He's there in the assault of Alderaan. He nearly kills Satele Shan AND Jace Malcolm by himser?

Who dat?

Who dat?

Who dat?

Like vader?

When it got blown up?

...was this in the crappy prequel trilogy?

Edited August 13, 2012 by BlazingShadow

[ScarletBlaze]

So as I'm approaching level 50 with my first toon, I must say I'm disappointed with the level of "Star Warsyness" of this game. I would assume that BW and EA were willing to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at a game is the huge base of people out there who are Star Wars fans. Any by "Star Wars fans", I mean people who watched & liked the original trilogy.

 

For example, why does this Darth Malgus character show up all over the place? How many more people would play this game if it was Darth Vader?

 

So far, the only planets I've really liked are Tatooine and Hoth, and Alderaan. Before playing this game, I had never heard of Taris, or Nar Shadda, or Belsavis, or any of those other planets.

 

Okay, I sort of remember the Twi'lek dancers, so that's kind of cool. But who are the Mirakula, or whatever they're called? And those Chiss, or the Sith?

 

I'm sure lots of people who are familiar with the "Extended Universe" get all excited for references to Darth Revan, but the average person doesn't. Darth Revan wasn't worth a $100 million MMORPG. Darth Vader would be.

 

i think this time period is perfect. They have more freedom than they had with the era SWG was based on.

 

Most people playing this game have also played Kotor and other games and know of Taris and the other planets.

 

And I haven't met anyone that doesn't know about the Sith.

 

There is more to being a Star Wars fans than just watching and knowing the movies. There are other books, etc that Star Wars know of. So saying the only Star Wars fans is the ones that only watched the movies is wrong. For me personally that was only the start of my Star Wars knowledge. I found the books and other items to increase my knowledge of Star Wars. I didn't base everything on the movies.

Edited August 13, 2012 by ScarletBlaze

[Darth-Rammstein]

i think this time period is perfect. They have more freedom than they had with the era SWG was based on.

 

Yet swg still brought so much more to the table even with said restrictions.

[RazielHex]

Yet swg still brought so much more to the table even with said restrictions.

 

Like Zombies

 

And ripping off KOTOR by implementing HK-47

 

and including Mandalorians in a bunker in Endor

 

Oooh wait, all that **** makes no goddamned sense.

[Sniperrecon]

Like Zombies

 

And ripping off KOTOR by implementing HK-47

 

and including Mandalorians in a bunker in Endor

 

Oooh wait, all that **** makes no gosh darned sense.

 

Well , the Zombies were added after the book "Death Troopers" came out and was a way to explain where all the Zombies went after that. Made sense if you read the book.

 

HK-47 was easy to fit in there. Does everyone think there was only one HK-47? HK-47 was the make and model , so another droid of that model would be HK-47c or a HK-52 and then a HK-52a and so on.

 

The Mando's on Endor are a bit harder to read into lore , but not too hard. They are nomadic , so at this time they are still looking for a Leader (Fett later) and have no homeworld. They land on Endor and find a abandonded base. In the books , the Death Watch did take refuge on Endor for a time , untill the Empire moved in and started setting up bases.

[Brittaany_Banks]

Are you kidding?

He was in every single cinematic leading up to the game's release.

 

He kills Satele Shan's Master, Kao Den Darach. He kills Darth Vindican, his own Master. He leads the assault on the Jedi Temple and destroys it. He kills Master Ven Zallow, the leader of the Temple. He's there in the assault of Alderaan. He nearly kills Satele Shan AND Jace Malcolm by himself!

 

He orchestrates everything the Empire does. Every single flashpoint is a single stroke of his master plan. He has the players go to Hammer Station in order to obtain the Advocent technology. He has the players go attack Clan Varad in order to gain an allegiance of a competing Mandalorian Clan. He has players track down and kill Darth Revan so he can control the Foundry. He has the players perform in the Colicoid War games to have access to their weaponry. He has the players assault the Red Reaper and kill his Master's master, Darth Ikoral, to ensure that the Pureblood Hegemony will not return to the Empire.

 

Then when all of this is complete, he performs a coup d'etat, using every single element of all the previous flashpoints as his own tools to become the New Emperor so he could make the Sith Empire more like the Republic.

 

No offense but you need to wrap spoilers around your post

[Fyurii]

HK-47 was easy to fit in there. Does everyone think there was only one HK-47? HK-47 was the make and model , so another droid of that model would be HK-47c or a HK-52 and then a HK-52a and so on.

 

No, there was only one HK-47. It was the same droid from KoTOR, KoTOR2 and TOR that was in SWG, built by Darth Revan.

His program was uploaded onto the computer systems of an Old Republic warship that was found crashed on Mustufar.

Players wound up giving him a new body, control of a droid production facility which he used to build a new body and a droid army of his own so he could wage war on the rest of the galaxy.

 

Seriously, go play KoTOR and KoTOR2.

(KoTOR2 with the Restored Content Mod, as Lucas Arts forced Obsidian to release the game after approximately only 6-7 months ot total development time.)

[AlyxDinas]

It provides freedom to the writers. Choosing another era doesn't let them do what they want for class stories and such. It would limit them. Completely unexplored territory let's them work pretty free from the shackles of continuity.

[Path-x]

So far, the only planets I've really liked are Tatooine and Hoth, and Alderaan. Before playing this game, I had never heard of Taris, or Nar Shadda, or Belsavis, or any of those other planets.

 

I think the only planet that is really well made is Tatooine. It actually feels like Tatooine from Star Wars films. That cannot be said for Hoth (imo ofc). Hoth, to me, doesn't feel anything like the Hoth from ESB. As for Alderaan, it feels like I am playing some medieval-like MMO such as WoW or EQ and not Star Wars.

 

Nar Shadda is very basic and iconic planet of EU. Everyone with a little knowledge of EU knows it. But again SWTOR made it wrong, contradicting the previously established sources. Well if you haven't heard of Taris and Revan I strongly suggest you play original KOTOR. It really is better than SWTOR, imo ofc. It is like the prequels we hoped for.

 

I'm sure lots of people who are familiar with the "Extended Universe" get all excited for references to Darth Revan, but the average person doesn't. Darth Revan wasn't worth a $100 million MMORPG. Darth Vader would be.

 

You don't know how stupid that sounds to someone like me. I have seen a video game (Force Unleashed) featuring Vader and I can tell you it is a disaster. I wish I could wipe my memory of that blasphemy. A character like Vader is sacred and should NOT be fiddled with because it will just degrade it. EU already ruined and degraded enough characters, concepts and elements from OT (for example: force lighting, turning back from the dark side etc).

Edited August 14, 2012 by Path-x

[Timarick]

George Lucas is a great editor.

 

He's *not* a talented director.

 

He could do screenplays of, say, Zahn's New Empire series (known as the "Thrawn Trilogy") and that would be great, as long as he never touched a camera.

 

Other way around. He has great visual and ideas. Him in the Director's Chair is a good idea. Him as the writer of DIALOGUE is ****. He can't write dialogue for **** (and he himself admitted to this), and apparently can't cast his lead character yet somehow perfectly cast everyone else!

[Otembe]

The movie trilogies are entirely about one family. The members of that one family are the only people in the galaxy who matter, and the large scale conflict between the Empire and the Rebels serves only to mirror the family drama on a larger scale.

 

That's not an MMO. You know why I didn't play Star Wars Galaxies? Because I wasn't interested in being a dirt farmer while the real heroes did the important things, off stage and in another entertainment medium altogether. In the Extended Universe, there's enough elbow room that I can lead the Imperial Boarding Party, break my foot off in Revan's behind, and take his stuff. I can meet new characters who matter in the time and place of the setting, and be one of the people who matter myself. If I wanted to be an extra in the story of someone else's character, I'd still be in Azeroth, watching Varian take credit for Onyxia and Thrall for Deathwing.

Edited August 14, 2012 by Otembe

[CorellianWannabe]

The movie trilogies are entirely about one family. The members of that one family are the only people in the galaxy who matter, and the large scale conflict between the Empire and the Rebels serves only to mirror the family drama on a larger scale.

 

That's not an MMO. You know why I didn't play Star Wars Galaxies? Because I wasn't interested in being a dirt farmer while the real heroes did the important things, off stage and in another entertainment medium altogether. In the Extended Universe, there's enough elbow room that I can lead the Imperial Boarding Party, break my foot off in Revan's behind, and take his stuff. I can meet new characters who matter in the time and place of the setting, and be one of the people who matter myself. If I wanted to be an extra in the story of someone else's character, I'd still be in Azeroth, watching Varian take credit for Onyxia and Thrall for Deathwing.

 

So you're saving the day-just like every other player. How is that any better? MMOs have to make the players unimportant-otherwise they don't work.

[JacenHallis]

So you're saving the day-just like every other player. How is that any better? MMOs have to make the players unimportant-otherwise they don't work.

I disagree. MMOs work best when the players are the central characters of the story, nameless as they may be. My favorite expansion for WoW was Wrath of the Lich King, because they finally started writing quests that made the player character out to be a hero. Yes, Bolvar stormed the Wrath Gate, but it was because of the PC that he was able to do so. There were glimpses of this earlier, too: Katrana Prestor was outed as Onyxia when the PCs freed Marshal Windsor from the Black Rock Depths and escorted him through Stormwind to face her. The PCs were instrumental in saving the realm from an incursion by the Burning Legion after the betrayal by Kael'thas Sunstrider. These were great moments.

 

The worst part of WoW, though, was when other lore characters started to get the credit in the canon lore for those deeds. Onyxia was outed by Windsor, who was escorted by Varian Wrynn and his posse. In fact, it was Varian Wrynn who hunted her down in the Wyrmbog and killed her damn near alone. I'm not sure how Wrath was rewritten, but I'm pretty sure it probably ended up with Tirion Fordring (a man I helped rediscover his true calling in Vanilla) facing off mano a mano versus Arthas, or maybe Bolvar interfered at the last possible moment. Who knows? The problem came when the player characters became unimportant to the story.

 

Why do you think there were so many Jedi in SWG? People want to be the hero. They don't want to be the person who cuts the hero's lawn.

 

Okay, some do, but they are the niche market.

[CorellianWannabe]

I disagree. MMOs work best when the players are the central characters of the story, nameless as they may be. My favorite expansion for WoW was Wrath of the Lich King, because they finally started writing quests that made the player character out to be a hero. Yes, Bolvar stormed the Wrath Gate, but it was because of the PC that he was able to do so. There were glimpses of this earlier, too: Katrana Prestor was outed as Onyxia when the PCs freed Marshal Windsor from the Black Rock Depths and escorted him through Stormwind to face her. The PCs were instrumental in saving the realm from an incursion by the Burning Legion after the betrayal by Kael'thas Sunstrider. These were great moments.

 

The worst part of WoW, though, was when other lore characters started to get the credit in the canon lore for those deeds. Onyxia was outed by Windsor, who was escorted by Varian Wrynn and his posse. In fact, it was Varian Wrynn who hunted her down in the Wyrmbog and killed her damn near alone. I'm not sure how Wrath was rewritten, but I'm pretty sure it probably ended up with Tirion Fordring (a man I helped rediscover his true calling in Vanilla) facing off mano a mano versus Arthas, or maybe Bolvar interfered at the last possible moment. Who knows? The problem came when the player characters became unimportant to the story.

 

Why do you think there were so many Jedi in SWG? People want to be the hero. They don't want to be the person who cuts the hero's lawn.

 

Okay, some do, but they are the niche market.

 

But you didn't do anything in Northrend that millions of other players didn't do. In fact until the phasing programming was added you had no evidence that you had done anything at all. That elite monster I killed in Dragonblight is still wandering around, the Scourge hasn't been beaten back-hell Orgrimmar can't even take care of the troggs under the city. Go back to Outland and see that stopping the Burning Legion didn't seem to accomplish much.

 

The story has to remain static for the players who haven't done the area yet, so the players can't affect anything, which makes them powerless. I suppose the feeling of importance can be conveyed by the writing, but in the end taking down the Cult of the Bad Ones only to see them respawning as you leave feels just as unimportant as killing 10 womp rats to make rat soup for the Mos Eisley cantina you work at.

[JacenHallis]

The story has to remain static for the players who haven't done the area yet, so the players can't affect anything, which makes them powerless. I suppose the feeling of importance can be conveyed by the writing, but in the end taking down the Cult of the Bad Ones only to see them respawning as you leave feels just as unimportant as killing 10 womp rats to make rat soup for the Mos Eisley cantina you work at.

It's suspension of disbelief. It's the same as accepting that I don't kill someone when I unload an assault cannon into their chests for a full three seconds or lop off a few limbs when I'm on my Jedi. There are certain game mechanics that preclude changes, as you've noted. The thing is, though, that I can put those aside and still enjoy the story, even without widespread phasing.

[Rahak]

So as I'm approaching level 50 with my first toon, I must say I'm disappointed with the level of "Star Warsyness" of this game. I would assume that BW and EA were willing to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at a game is the huge base of people out there who are Star Wars fans. Any by "Star Wars fans", I mean people who watched & liked the original trilogy.

 

For example, why does this Darth Malgus character show up all over the place? How many more people would play this game if it was Darth Vader?

 

So far, the only planets I've really liked are Tatooine and Hoth, and Alderaan. Before playing this game, I had never heard of Taris, or Nar Shadda, or Belsavis, or any of those other planets.

 

Okay, I sort of remember the Twi'lek dancers, so that's kind of cool. But who are the Mirakula, or whatever they're called? And those Chiss, or the Sith?

 

I'm sure lots of people who are familiar with the "Extended Universe" get all excited for references to Darth Revan, but the average person doesn't. Darth Revan wasn't worth a $100 million MMORPG. Darth Vader would be.

If you've never played KotOR I or II, read a Star Wars book or comic, or even bothered to look up some stuff on the 'wiki, I'd say the error is on your part.

[ProfessorWalsh]

I sort of agree with the OP.

 

I say sort of because I do think that they made a mistake with the era. I don't think it should have been "the Old Republic" I think it should have been post FotJ or post Legacy.

 

Instead of us being ordered around by Satele Shan, I'd much rather take orders from Grandmaster Skywalker. I'm sure that the Mandalorian fans out there would have rather been granted the title of Mandalorian from Boba Fett. Heck, they could have even done three factions: Imperial, Galactic Alliance, Sith...

 

I, personally, could give a flip less about Darth Revan and I love the EU.

[RazielHex]

Other way around. He has great visual and ideas. Him in the Director's Chair is a good idea. Him as the writer of DIALOGUE is ****. He can't write dialogue for **** (and he himself admitted to this), and apparently can't cast his lead character yet somehow perfectly cast everyone else!

 

You ever watch that documentary that goes to show that the Prequel series should have been focused on Obi-Wan Kenobi, and not Anakin Skywalker?

 

It makes a fairly good point how it's Ben Kenobi who is truly the main character. He's the one consistently being the hero, doing the heroic deeds, and carries the plot of the clone wars on his shoulders.

[CorellianWannabe]

If you've never played KotOR I or II, read a Star Wars book or comic, or even bothered to look up some stuff on the 'wiki, I'd say the error is on your part.

 

So Bioware wasn't hoping to entice people who aren't intimately familiar with every aspect of the Star Wars media?

 

'Star Wars fan' tends to mean "I like the movies". If it meant more I imagine the various other media would see much higher sales.

 

I admit, I couldn't care less about Malgus, Satele. and the rest-they're poor copies of their predecessors (who weren't especially original either). Satele having an illegitimate child she then abandons means her opinion on morality means less to me than the stims vendor.

 

I also dislike how Bioware offers options in their games, then bulldozes ahead with the official 'canon' anyway. Revan was dark-side, or female, or simply had no interest in romantically pursuing bratty Bastila-too bad, your game didn't happen. Why bother with options if they're going to be dismissed anyway?

 

Please don't say it was all Lucas-Bioware does the same thing with their in-house properties as well.

[Timarick]

So you're saving the day-just like every other player. How is that any better? MMOs have to make the players unimportant-otherwise they don't work.

 

No you don't. That's the thing. It's *********** Star Wars. the galaxy is MASSIVE and the time gap vast. Anything can happen at any time to any one individual. In the EU, if you really look at it, there are THOUSANDS of main characters with their own story to tell and get a chance to be heroic. Not to mention we are thousands of years in the past and a lot can be lost and forgotten by the time we get to the New Republic-era and past. That's why this timeline and story works because anyone can be a hero and in some subtle way, shape the galaxy into what becomes the Tragedy of Anakin Skywalker.

[Timarick]

You ever watch that documentary that goes to show that the Prequel series should have been focused on Obi-Wan Kenobi, and not Anakin Skywalker?

 

It makes a fairly good point how it's Ben Kenobi who is truly the main character. He's the one consistently being the hero, doing the heroic deeds, and carries the plot of the clone wars on his shoulders.

 

Except the story was never about Obi-Wan from day 1 in Lucas' mind. Even when the original trilogy came out, his focus was on Darth Vader. How a heroic man falls from grace and then rises again.

[criminalheretic]

So as I'm approaching level 50 with my first toon, I must say I'm disappointed with the level of "Star Warsyness" of this game. I would assume that BW and EA were willing to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at a game is the huge base of people out there who are Star Wars fans. Any by "Star Wars fans", I mean people who watched & liked the original trilogy.

 

For example, why does this Darth Malgus character show up all over the place? How many more people would play this game if it was Darth Vader?

 

So far, the only planets I've really liked are Tatooine and Hoth, and Alderaan. Before playing this game, I had never heard of Taris, or Nar Shadda, or Belsavis, or any of those other planets.

 

Okay, I sort of remember the Twi'lek dancers, so that's kind of cool. But who are the Mirakula, or whatever they're called? And those Chiss, or the Sith?

 

I'm sure lots of people who are familiar with the "Extended Universe" get all excited for references to Darth Revan, but the average person doesn't. Darth Revan wasn't worth a $100 million MMORPG. Darth Vader would be.

 

You should play KOTOR and KOTOR 2. Good games.

[ProfessorWalsh]

Except the story was never about Obi-Wan from day 1 in Lucas' mind. Even when the original trilogy came out, his focus was on Darth Vader. How a heroic man falls from grace and then rises again.

 

That is a myth.

 

Lucas originally planned on the story to focus on Luke Skywalker and the traditional Heroes journey. Originally Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker were supposed to be two different people and Anakin Skywalker was supposed to fight Darth Vader in Episode V when he showed up to save Luke Skywalker and the surprise twist was supposed to be that he wasn't as dead as anyone thought. Lucas changed that mid-way through Episode V. So to say, "from day 1" is completely incorrect.

[armphid]

But you didn't do anything in Northrend that millions of other players didn't do. In fact until the phasing programming was added you had no evidence that you had done anything at all. That elite monster I killed in Dragonblight is still wandering around, the Scourge hasn't been beaten back-hell Orgrimmar can't even take care of the troggs under the city. Go back to Outland and see that stopping the Burning Legion didn't seem to accomplish much.

 

The story has to remain static for the players who haven't done the area yet, so the players can't affect anything, which makes them powerless. I suppose the feeling of importance can be conveyed by the writing, but in the end taking down the Cult of the Bad Ones only to see them respawning as you leave feels just as unimportant as killing 10 womp rats to make rat soup for the Mos Eisley cantina you work at.

 

What you're essentially saying is that this, and every game, should be either fully phased or content should then be inaccessible once one person completes it. While I realize that is not directly your statement, it is where your argument is going.

 

I understand the root of your frustration but at the same time it seems naive to an almost ridiculous extent to expect that the game could reflect this. Phasing as a game technology is still relatively new, and while usable is also very resource consumptive. The other option is, of course, ludicrous.

 

However, there's an essential flaw in the rhetoric of repetition of deeds devaluing them. The deed/event is still a challenge that you have, ideally, enjoyed. That experience and the enjoyment of it can only be negated by you. The fact that others have completed the same content in the same game does nothing to you or your achievement. That's their achievement. Not wanting them to have it to make your own unique is dramatically narcissistic and appears willfully ignorant of the reality of games of any kind.

 

I say that because if this is a crisis point for you, it's worth noting that this is not an MMO only problem. At risk of being a snide tool, I hate to tell you that you are not the only one to have played Mass Effect 3 or God of War or whatever other games you have played. Millions of other people have played the same game and done the same things, gotten the same endings. Does that devalue those games? What if you start a new game?

 

I've never posted this before because I believe it's a cop-out and passive aggressive response, but if this is bothering you so much, MMOs and maybe all video games may be the wrong kind of entertainment for you. There's no really feasible way for a company to produce the kind of experience you seem to want. You might also want to consider doing table-top/pen and paper RPGs, as there your deeds can be the only ones that matter and dramatically and visibly shape the universe around you. Unless you have a problem knowing that other people might be playing the same game somewhere, therefore nullifying your efforts.

 

To get back to the original point of the OP, however, I would also point out that this as a problem would make playing in the Rebellion/Galactic Empire Era even worse than feeling this way in TOR. Setting the game in an unknown time or a time that Bioware has themselves helped create allows them to now have to work the players "around" the story. They can let it be the players story and let you be the hero.

 

Referencing other MMOs is always risky, but one good thing to look at might be Lord of the Rings Online. It suffers from this a great deal in many ways; because if you've read the books or seen the movies, you know the real important stuff is being done by others somewhere else. Your efforts are important, and they help, but that feeling that you're just supporting cast never really goes away. At least, not for me. Putting the game in the era of the movies would have been a big mistake and just given them more canon and headaches to work around.