A few people were able to get some hands on time with Star Wars: The Old Republic at E3. We’ve all seen the magnificent trailers, we all know that no-one tells a story in games like Bioware and we all know that Star Wars is an IP that you can bank on. What we haven’t really known much about yet is how that game plays.
Obviously this hands on time was limited to certain sections and was all solo play, but there is some pretty vital information on the game to come from it. The kind of info that will make plenty of people groan and get a lot of people a little excited. It seems that SWtOR plays like World of Warcraft. A lot like World of Warcraft.
Some sexy Star Wars related things coming out of E3, starting with motion control. This is a clip of a Star Wars game coming next year, using Kinect (formally Project Natal). Motion control light sabers. Awesome.
Bioware this week released some details on the companion system fro Star Wars: The Old Republic. Now, I could do a write up about it but as Bioware have already done so, I thought I’d just ninja theirs. Here it is:
Every Star Wars hero needs a companion. Han had Chewie, Luke had R2-D2 — even Jabba had the cackling monkey lizard Salacious B. Crumb. These characters compliment a player’s strengths or weaknesses, and provide company for the epic journey you will inevitably undertake. Whether they’re combative, friendly, flirtatious, or even just good for a laugh, companions always contribute to your adventure. Read the rest of this entry »
There has probably been a pretty big cloud hanging over Star Wars: The Old Republic since announcement that everyone is away of – isn’t everyone just going to play a Jedi? It’s a pretty valid concern, no one likes it when everyone is playing the same class (oh, hai Death Knights), but how to do get generations that have grown up with the zzzzrom zzzrom of lightsabres to consider anything else?
Well, for mine, I think Bioware have done a pretty good job of adding some very interesting alternative. Well enough, I think, that we won’t see Jedi everywhere. So, now that all the classes have been relieved, lets take a look. Read the rest of this entry »
Normal Nasi would be posting tonight, but it seems he forgot to feed the hamster that runs his internets so I’ just throwing up a little news as a bit of a filler.
First off, there is some concept art for the Warhammer 40K MMO on the web. The art itself is nothing exciting or of anything new, but it’s nice to be reminded that it’s being developed.
Super Awesome news item number two – the last two classes for Star Wars : The Old Republic have been annouced and there may just be some compition for the Jedi Knight after all.
Finally, Siege of Mirkwood has gone live. Another awesome video for it, LotRO is really going from strength to strength at the moment.
One of my biggest gripes with Wow has always been how poorly it tells its story. There are so many fantastic tales in the Wow universe and really there is no better place to tell them than an MMO.
The problem is, you need to know what is important before you start, otherwise it’s impossible to separate the ‘kill ten rats’ quests from the important ones. Too often, too many people skip the quest text because it’s just another quest among the million other quests we do.
LotRO is so much better at telling it’s story, ensuring you know which are the main storyline quests and spacing mini cut scenes at the end of nearly all of them. The Warcraft story though no less epic than the journey of the ring bearer, it seems less so due to the in game narrative.
SWTOR is working on building up the story extremely well at the moment – although being Bioware that should be no surprise. Bioware have always excelled at story-telling in game and important storylines are easily distinguished from fillers. As SWTOR slowly inches closer to release, Bioware keeps working at getting the story out there to engage players from day one. There has been a web comic available for months and the timeline entries are absolutely fantastic and extremely engaging. In addition, there is an equally awesome video.
So how can Wow tell its story better? The Wrath Gate scene was an excellent step in the right direction and hopefully is a direction Blizzard will continue to move in, it would also be nice to see the patch moves (like Ulduar and The Black Temple) incorporated directly into the game.
I think the other path WoW should take is to reduce the number of quests but drastically increase the involvement in the important stories, resulting in larger quest rewards and XP. Instead of ten meaningless quests, have two major ones which will take 30 minutes to an hour to complete. Give them a real meaning so we become more invested in both the quest and the story.
Take Malygos as an example of a story poorly told. If you know the history of Warcraft, or Malygos’ story, what happens in the Eye of Eternity is a major, major deal. Yet, how many people read any of the quest text relating to that story? I would say very few because they were still recovering from sifting through bat shit. The Wrath Gate scence appeared to come out of no where and I still have nfi what the beef with Sartharion was.
Moving forward Blizzard are obviously making some major changes with Path of the Titans, the Catalysm and only a small rise in the level cap. Hopefully with this we’ll see a tighter focus on storytelling and maybe a few more people can get truely excited about seeing the end of Arthas or the return of Deathwing.
