From day one, literally, Bioware has made no secret of the story component of TOR.
If you’re a Trooper, you start in Havoc squad… if you’re a Sith Inquisitor, you start as a slave… and so on. This has led to people pointing out, quite rightly, that the game seems to leave less roleplaying and imagination for people.
My trooper character, for example, MUST be from Havoc squad. And yours. And yours. And yours. And yours. And you over there? Yours, too. This generally isn’t how people who like to think about their characters would prefer to play an MMO. Period.
And sure, I take onboard that some people don’t care — they just want to play TOR “as a game”. And that’s fine. But in every MMO, and in BioWare games particularly, there are people who are quite creative and like to THINK about their character, too.
This has led to a TOR forum user telling me:
Its not Bioware’s job to do that. Bioware’s job is to give us a game with a storyline, quests, and gameplay that we can enjoy.
To which I say, actually, if you want to talk about what Bioware’s “job” is, it’s to provide a realistic multi-user environment. Why? Because it says this is an MMO. As such, it needs a different set-up to Bioware’s single player games. That is the bottom line, right there.
I’m getting a little sick, actually, of people defending a single player experience as valid in MMO terms — it’s not. It’s absolutely valid in a single player game — fantastic fun, actually, and I think Bioware makes great single player games — but this isn’t a single player game and should be treated differently. Thus far, I’m worried that it hasn’t been.
So the real question is, how will Bioware reconcile story and the desire for people to feel like their own character?
There’s been a lot of talk, but none of it’s actually answered this staggeringly simple question. I really wish we had one.
I’m getting a little sick, actually, of people defending a single player experience as valid in MMO terms — it’s not. It’s absolutely valid in a single player game — fantastic fun, actually, and I think Bioware makes great single player games — but this isn’t a single player game and should be treated differently. Thus far, I’m worried that it hasn’t been.
So the real question is, how will Bioware reconcile story and the desire for people to feel like their own character?
I bellieve that BW,on their high horse surrounded by ninions of fanbois
see thhemdelves as the Messiah (inset yout own Lfe Of Brian quotes)
Maybe after a few nonths and a taperingoff of subs they night kisten, maybe.
“So the real question is, how will Bioware reconcile story and the desire for people to feel like their own character?”
The same way that PnP RPer’s reconcile their character desires with the GM’s storyline? This is not a new question in the realm of RPG’s. As I’ve noted on the forums before, yes there may only be three options for each decision point in the story, but that’s about two more than some tabletop GM’s have given me!
So, I’m not worried about this. While it does not have the flexibility of the tabletop experience, this is a leap forward in terms of putting the RPG back into MMO. I can hardly critize them for taking a step in the right direction.
But it’s not those choices I’m worried about. It’s when they tell you who your character is that bothers me. For example, has a GM come up to you and said, “You know that Cleric you made called Rolf, who comes from the Hinterland, grew up in the Church all his life, and has blonde hair? Yeah, in my game he comes from Asgard, has long brown hair and used to be a cook.” Because that’s essentially what TOR is doing — maybe not so much with the physical descriptions, but with telling you things about your character that are just unnecessary.
If TOR wasn’t a MMO, it would go down in history as one of the greatest games ever made, instead it will probably be remembered as a jack of all trades MMO, that just tried to make everyone happy.
Well actually I don’t see what the problem is here. I think we’ll still be free to roleplay our entire backstories, and how we end up in the position that we’re in at the start of the game. And after that, during the actual storyline of the game, as HarbringerZero said we’re actually able to make choices that influence it, and are able to make the moral choices that we would envision our character making. I’ve never before seen that in an MMO. So I think that this game actually looks to have far more RP potential than any other MMO I’ve come across.