I’ve written virtually since day one on the TOR forums about how an increased focus on storyline will bite into the immersion of TOR as an MMO, which is what it purports to be.

And I was reminded of that again today when my wife (who is a total gamer girl and a BioWare fan), walked into my study and said, “So there are romances in TOR, right? Like other BioWare games?”

I looked up, “Yep, that’s what they say.”

“OK,” she said, “So let’s say I have a party member my character falls in love with called ‘Eric’. Am I seriously going to go down to the cantina for downtime with our guildies in the future and half of the girls will also be there, hanging out with ‘their’ Eric, too?”

I rolled the idea around in my head, based on everything I have read, to date.

“Yep,” I finally concluded. “I guess so.”

She screwed up her nose at me.

“Yuck,” she said. “That works in single player games, but not MMOs.” And then she walked away.

In truth, I have to agree with my wife. If this is how the result of our storylines will pan out when we are hanging out with our guildmates (who might have done exactly the same storyline if playing the same class), I would find such a scenario pretty darn immersion-breaking myself — and yet another reason why I think focusing too heavily on a storyline for each class (no matter what options it holds), can actually hurt your experience overall.