Ahoy Beskar members, check out BioWare’s James Ohlen (studio creative director and lead designer), Drew Karpyshyn (principal writer) and Alexander Freed (managing editor), all discussing the creation of the multiplayer story in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Lots of good information here — don’t let the 50 minute run time put you off at all — for you to digest and talk about.
Click here for the video.
Just recently I had some words back and forth with a number of Mandalorian guilds which reside on the “undecided” forum on the official TOR forums. The conversation(s) can be distilled down to this:
blur: Why are you guys in the “undecided” forum? Isn’t it clear that the Bounty Hunter is the most Mandalorian of classes? As such, shouldn’t you be a Sith guild, like Beskar, in order to have Bounty Hunters on your roster?
Guild 1: We don’t know enough, yet. Who says that Bounty Hunter is the most Mandalorian of classes?
Guild 2: We are a Sith and Republic guild, so we can have any classes we want.
Guild 3: It’s all roleplay. We can say we’re Mandalorian Jedi, working for the Republic, if we want to!
Working backwards on those replies, I can see how some people would be ‘OK’ with being in a Republic guild, comprising Jedi, Smugglers and Troopers and roleplaying that they all have Mandalorian backgrounds. I think the more passionate Mandalorian fans, meanwhile, can see the flaws in this method. Namely, everything we’ve seen of the storyline points to the Mandalorians fighting the Republic at present, in the employ of the Sith. Not to mention, the issues Mandalorians have with Force users in general.
Sure, it might have been cute when Karen Traviss wrote a Jedi into Kal Skirata’s clan in the Republic Commando series of novels — and I have no doubt that’s where all these “Mandalorian Jedi” wannabe’s are getting their inspiration — but even that was under very, very specific circumstances… including said Jedi renouncing his Jedi ways and living like an beskar’gam wearing Mandalorian, day to day. Meanwhile, I get the feeling that all these “Mandalorian Jedi” wannabe’s are going to want to have their cake and eat it too, ie: to run around as a Jedi in-game, but call themselves a Mandalorian, too. Blech.
The second reply, meanwhile, flies in the face of all logic. Bioware has divided the classes across two factions — Sith and Republic — and made it clear that TOR is all about a universe at war. They want everyone to be “heroic” and taking part in this conflict whether they like it or not. See, TOR’s not a game like Star Wars Galaxies where you could opt-out of the fighting and go and have a farm on Tatooine. TOR is all about the fight. As such, I would fall off my chair, twice, if Bioware says that guilds can be multi-factional. Given that, all these guilds which claim to be multi-factional are most likely going to be up a well-known creek without a paddle and will lose members when they have to choose one faction over the other and all the members who wanted to be “the other” faction either have to change faction or get the shaft. Watch and see.
Some more advanced guilds claim they will simply run two separate guilds. OK… the only problems I see there are, (i) The game could easily faction-lock people to a server (ie: if you create a Republic character, you cannot create a Sith character on the same server — and vice versa), which means that the two guilds would exist on two different servers — essentially in two different universes, so to speak — making the concept next to pointless and, (ii) Running one guild is tough. Running two guilds is insane. Anyone who lightly says, “Oh yeah, I’ll just run two guilds…” has clearly never done it before.
Then we get to the third reply. The reply that guild’s make when they just can’t believe the game isn’t going to go their way. The reply of people who can read a dozen hard and fast facts about TOR, then turn around and say they’re all meaningless because more information might emerge to blow them all away. Nuh. Sorry. Not this time. The game is what it is and I think Bioware has been really clear in a number of areas about where its taking the storyline and, by association, the gamers who play certain classes. Just on the Mando question, I refer you all to the new Drew Karpyshyn interview at Darth Hater. Specifically, this bit:
During the panel you mentioned that the Mandalorians will be a part of the Bounty Hunter class story line; how involved will they be? Also, can you give us any more information about how prominently they will be featured in the over arching galactic story?
DK: We obviously can’t go into too many details, but the Mandalorians are an integral part of the Bounty Hunter class story. They are also, as the Mandalorians are wont to be, a very powerful faction in the galaxy. They like to get their gauntlets in everyone’s business, so they will feature quite prominently in Star Wars: The Old Republic. And if you are a fan of the Mandos, I think you are going to really like it.
So how any Mandalorian guild can sit out there, at present, and tell me that the Bounty Hunter class isn’t tied up with the Mandalorians more than the other classes… I don’t know. I just don’t know. And, sure, Karpyshyn does say that the Mandalorians get into “everyone’s” business — and that’s no surprise given we’ve watched them sack Coruscant in the timeline — but it’s always the Bounty Hunter class that gets singled out for the most Mandalorian attention and commentary. How any guild could sit out there and tell me that the Jedi or Smugglers or Republic Troopers, for example, are “more Mandalorian” in their storyline is beyond me.
And yet there it is… there are Mandalorian guilds out there, right now, which will promise you a multi-factional guild, even though that’s highly unlikely to be allowed in the game. There are others which will promise you two guilds, even though that’s going to be an admin nightmare and the guild’s could end up being on totally different servers, anyway. Others will say it’s cool if you want to roleplay a Mandalorian Jedi — even though it’s perhaps the cheesiest and least likely character I could ever dream up. And then there are others who will try and assure you that Bounty Hunters really aren’t the most Mandalorian of all the classes… yet they clearly are.
What are your thoughts?
You know, every time I swing past the “Undecided Recruitment” section of the official forums for The Old Republic, I see people who are firmly convinced that, for some unknown reason, “Undecided Recruitment” means there will be a third faction in TOR.
No amount of telling them that it’s a choice between Sith & Republic seems to shift this perception.
Aside from that, allowing an “Undecided” Recruitment” forum has created some other issues too, primarily encouraging many people to start half-baked guilds where they don’t even know what faction they’re going to be.
I mean, let’s get real here. Knowing what faction you want to play is the very underpinning of any guild concept. It’s the thing you should be starting with FIRST at the top of your list of things you want the guild to be about.
It STAGGERS me that people think they can start guilds without knowing what faction they will ultimately play in TOR. For mine, it borks the whole process, from the top of the guild tree right down to it’s lowest roots.
Think about this for a moment: Any “Undecided” Recruitment” guild will attract people who want to play Sith and people who want to play Republic. Now, call me crazy if you like, but SOMEONE is going to end up disappointed in each of these guild scenarios when the guild in question MUST choose one faction over the other in the end. It is inevitable.
So although this thread won’t actually change anything, my vote is on the table that “Undecided” Recruitment” is actually more trouble than it’s worth. Why not encourage guilds to actually PICK A SIDE first BEFORE starting a guild?
What’s that? Guilds shouldn’t have to deal with something so pesky as knowing why they exist? Ahhh, I see.
And that, as Yoda once said, is why you fail.
As some of you may know, one of my favorite MMO’s out there (to the point where if I have some extra cash and am lacking sense), is Vanguard. “Now Rix, what is wrong with you?”, is what is going through your mind more than likely. But hear me out on this.
Massive explorable landscapes: Vanguard did these well (even if there are still parts of the world where if you jump you’ll land and fall through the world). I had flashbacks to EQ 1, especially Ruins of Kunark. I would love some excuse to go off and explore Ord Mandrell or find some hidden area of Alderaan. But at the same time these have draw-backs, even years after it’s release their are vast swaths of land barley touched and used, full of bugs and broken stuff.
Class and race choices: Vanguard did this very well too, from every race having it’s own feel and look, to even bringing back the need to learn another races language on the RP servers. Even races had their own relations on and off their own islands. Classes faced similar choices and consequences. A Dread Knight could actually be refused service by some merchants and healers while Monks and Shaman’s were universally welcomed. Classes also went through many changes as they leveled in addition to the normal go find a trainer and get your new level skills. At level 15 a monk chose one of three specialties for the class, which would limit what skills and abilities they had for the rest of their career. I want to see a race list for TOR with what stat adjustments and the like. We know the classes, but some of the progression just does not sit right with me.
Quest system: Vanguard was old school, go to this guy talk to him, he’ll point you in the right direction to find quest givers, stumble across a quest giver in the middle of nowhere, find a item that gave a quest. There is no holding of the hand there is no let me mark it on your map for you, they give you generally good directions and you can find what you need rather quickly. Sometimes random stuff would be in game for a single patch and it’d be gone forever with the next. I would rather see this in the game than a WoW/Bethesda style compass holding your hand on every step, just as long as we don’t get Morrowind’s directions.
Overextending themselves: The devs of Vanguard did this, really really well. Everything was half done when this shipped and the open beta showed, I would have personally shipped the game one island at a time then added one per expansion. If the space combat isn’t done when TOR is ready to be put on the DVD’s, then it needs to not be there. Same for anything else, this is Bioware’s time to show if they can pull this off, we’ll see the truth next year, or even during beta.
One of the crappiest things to happen in MMOs over the past five years, or so, is the increasing propensity for beta keys to be given away like they’re some sort of competition prize.
This is maddening for people who take beta testing seriously as such giveaways are 99.9% going to people who just want to play the game for free, not actual beta testers.
Or, as we call them in the industry, cheap arses and tightwads.
The only time beta keys deserve to be tossed around at random is when a game goes into some sort of open beta a week or two out from release and it just doesn’t matter anymore.
Please, BioWare, don’t toss beta keys around like they’re nothing as the testing period opens up. And especially don’t give them to lame gaming sites to giveaway.
It’s kinda funny, but in the early days of Bioware’s Old Republic forum, people — like myself — would comment about wanting TOR to be a very sandbox kind of game. And didn’t the criticism rain down on us, thick and fast? “This is no Star Wars Galaxies!” people would sneer, belligerently. “Go and play that if you want sandbox!” Others would tell us that sandbox was a “stupid” way of designing a game and the “proof” of that was the success of World of Warcraft; a game which holds the player’s hand and guides them from quest to quest to quest in the most basic and linear of ways.
(To those who don’t understand the sandbox concept, it’s essentially a design concept in video games — often RPGs — where a player can freely roam a virtual world. Basically, your character appears in-game and can walk in any direction and find interesting things to do, which don’t have to be done in order. It’s a style of game where you feel immersed in the world because you’re making all the decisions — not having the game hold your hand and guide you from set-piece to set-piece.)
Anyway, what makes it all so funny is that in more recent times — I’d suggest the past six months or so — I’ve been seeing people raise concepts on the Bioware forums which are so deeply sandbox-based, it’s just crazy to see. I’ve also seen people praising new-release games like Red Dead Redemption for their gameplay. Yet, in both cases, it seems abundantly clear to me that the person making the comment doesn’t even realise that they’re praising a sandbox construct. So I’ve come to the conclusion that I think people actually like sandbox gaming without even realising it. Yet all it takes is for someone to cry, “But this isn’t Star Wars Galaxies!” and the bashing starts again.
Of course, having said all of this, it’s too late for The Old Republic. The developers set course for their vision of “the story” long before their forum even opened. Even if we’d praised sandbox games from dusk till dawn as soon as the forum opened and the Star Wars Galaxies haters had shut up for a change, nothing different would have happened anyway. I find that quite depressing, actually, because I think more people want a good sandbox game in this genre than they even realise; particularly after Star Wars Galaxies was messed up in the end and a lot of people out there have yet to even experience a good sandbox MMO, despite possibly playing — and enjoying — sandbox-style game in other forms, such as the aforementioned Red Dead Redemption. Your thoughts?
Moderation over at Bioware’s TOR forums has always been a bit dodgy, but it’s getting worse.
There are some moderators, who hide behind the “CommunitySupport” account over there who clearly couldn’t moderate their way out of a wet paper bag if they tried.
Check this out. This happened to me today:
What a load of bollocks. Asking, “What does this have to do with guilds?” isn’t even rude — it’s just a question. And a fair question at that, actually, given the thread’s topic versus forum location.
I’ve escalated this matter to the community manager, Sean Dahlberg, as yet another example of how the TOR moderators are drunk on power and will warn and post infringements apparantly at the slightest whim — usually without even understanding the basics of the situation.
Oh, and the icing on top? The thread got moved from the Guild forum so, clearly, I was right in what I said. The moderator just wanted to have a swing at me for no apparent reason, it seems.
It’s reaching the point, quite honestly, where you don’t know whether to say anything to anyone on the forums anymore for fear that some mod will decide to misinterpret your post and whack you with a warning or an infringement for no good reason. And when the environment feels like that, the moderation is clearly of a poor standard. There’s no other way to really look at it, is there?
Today’s effort is probably on par with the time I got a warning for posting a thread in the “General Discussion” forum and a mod thought they knew a better place for the thread and put it in the “Suggestion Box” instead! It was a subjective call to begin with — let alone one that required an official warning on top. And people wonder why I don’t rate the TOR forum mods?
I could moderate those forums better with one arm tied behind my back. Got any jobs, Sean?
