Sure, Jedi are meant to minimise emotional attachments but Anakin and his mother got Padme off of Tatooine and Anakin played a key part in the liberation of an entire world. I'm sure he could concentrate a bit better at his studies if he knew that his mother wasn't a slave any more. At the very least, Padme seems like a nice girl. Seems strange that she never got around to thinking, "You know it might be nice to do something for that woman who allowed her son to risk his life to help us and who is still being held in slavery."

This revolutionary game you are looking for is the original Guild Wars. It does have a reliance on healers but the healbots are usually good enough if you lack healers. It hasn't been copied because it wasn't a subscription model and most investors were looking for WoW-like returns.

It has nothing to do with logic. The reason why they don't free Shmi is because it wouldn't serve the plot. You don't go on adventures with your mother. So Lucas writes this whole convoluted gambling scenario so as to separate Anakin from Shmi. Once Anakin and Shmi are separated the fact that Shmi is still a slave isn't really that important to the plot so gets forgotten. The implied equality between the value of a pod and the value of a slave is also forgotten. It is a plot hole but not a particularly big one and one that can be easily rationalised. I'm sure that in a consistent Star Wars universe once the Phantom Menace crisis was over Anakin would have had enough influence to bargain for Shmi's release. The fact that he doesn't suggests that Shmi's slavery isn't actually all that important to Lucas.

Really? You would slaughter a whole camp of men, women and children? Well, that is your prerogative I suppose. What you are doing is an example of what I was stating earlier, justification of character behaviour instead of examining whether the artistic choice itself is successful. The real question though is not what you would do yourself but what effect this plot device has on the audience and whether this is consistent with the themes and topics of the story. I'm sure you would agree that a major theme of the story is that revenge, anger and hate are dark side emotions. With the act of genocide what we see is clearly indulgence in revenge and in his subsequent confession to Padme the overriding emotions are still anger and hatred. Why isn't this Anakin's fall? Why does Lucas just treat this barbaric act as a seed for control issues concerning Padme? Why does the story clearly indicate the Windu/Sidious duel as being Anakin's point of no return? Is dismemberment for the sake of love really more of a dark side issue than genocide for the sake of revenge? Is the life of a savage child really worth less than the hand of a Jedi master? I wonder what answer Yoda would give to those questions.

People who defend the prequels often do so by explaining why a particular character acts a certain way or why a particular plot point is not as dumb as it appears, usually with reference to expanded universe material or novelisations. This misses the whole point. If the film needs rationalisations for character behaviour then it has failed to make the audience emotionally involved with the characters. It doesn't matter how much CGI, action choreography or Natalie Portman you put in, if there is no emotional involvement there is no dramatic effect. This lack of audience involvement is the result of bad dialogue, unconvincing character development, dull cinematography and poor editing. I actually think that The Clone Wars is far more successful in all of these areas and the hokey droids and Jar Jar become like the Ewoks, annoyances to be tolerated. We believe in the characters actions and are genuinely interested in what happens to them. The way they develop the clones' personalities is particularly heartwarming. In respect to Anakin's fall to the dark side, well, when Anakin performs an act of genocide in ep.II, that pretty much decided things for me. Padme's relative lack of response to this and the subsequent treatment of Anakin's fall as being about concern for Padme leads me to the conclusion that either Lucas is a poor scriptwriter or that he has very questionable ethics.

Well, probably just another Lucas plot hole but I can provide an out for him, at least one that is better than the parsec finagle. You've got to look at this in terms of a gamble and not a trade. He is prepared to gamble 1 slave against the pod because he thinks the chances of Anakin winning are low so it is likely he will win the pod. He is not prepared to gamble 2 slaves against the pod because, although he thinks the chance is low, he is not willing to risk losing 2 slaves. In other words, just because he is prepared to risk betting a slave against a pod doesn't mean that he would be prepared to exchange a slave for a pod.

There is a lot of that article I agree with and I like MMOs. I think that many of the game mechanics of WoW and SWTOR are average at best and the fractured community caused by segregated servers doesn't help community building. I think that more fluid skill based MMOs will gradually replace number crunching MMOs in the same way that graphical RPG games replaced text adventures.

True but those rewards shouldn't create imbalance in the game by giving those players a competitive advantage. They could be better looking armors, titles or exclusive emotes. What would happen on the Pro-Tennis circuit if players were only allowed to use wooden rackets until they had won a Grand Slam?

I'ld like to deal with two major misconceptions in this thread. The first is that pen and paper RPGs were about levelling and gear grinding. Let's try that one out: DM: Ok, so the King's servant has requested that in order to deal with the rat infestation you have to bring back 20 rat skulls to him. Player: You must be joking? Well, ok, I guess that means we just have to kill 20 rats, right? DM: No because despite them all being rats they won't all have rat skulls so you might have to kill about 40 or 50. Player: I'm not sure about this... DM: Oh, don't worry, some of them might have gold or even better weapons for you and think about all the experience you will be getting from killing rats. You'll be level 5 before you know it. Player: .... Pen and paper RPGs were about adventuring, living out fantasies similar to the ones that players had read about in Tolkien and Howard books. Game mechanics and rules were added and made more complex than the simple board games of the time to add some versimilitude and feeling of risk to what was largely a descriptive experience. Levelling and loot was just an added bonus to the fun of adventuring. If half the stuff you see in most MMOs was tried by a real DM they wouldn't have many players at the next session. The second is that gear grinding is an essential element to MMOs. Guild Wars was a very successful model for both PvP and PvE. Level cap could be reached relatively quickly and, although stats based, pretty much all equipment at level cap was at parity. At least a third of PvE content at launch was designed for characters at level cap. Increasing difficulty was expected to be met by better cooperation and play from the players, not from treadmill stat increases. For those who enjoyed the process, gear grinding was available through craftable armors and rare weapons but these elements were purely aesthetic and thus totally optional. Post launch continued interest was maintained in PvE through the introduction of new classes, areas, missions, quests and events and in PvP through new classes, new pvp options and very varied, balanced skill mechanics. In my opinion, gear grinding is one of the laziest mechanics open to game developers and definitely has no place in any sort of competitive PvP environment. Originally with the Orange Armors I had hoped that SWTOR had learned this lesson but it appears not.

This is largely how I feel. There is a lot about this game which is very good but many aspects of it just aren't very good game design in my opinion. Here are the two which frustrate me the most. 1. Endgame In my opinion, the whole concept of endgame highlights one of the failings of many MMOs, SWTOR included: a lack of clarity about what the game actually is and the role that levelling plays in the game. In traditional pen and paper RPGs the process of levelling was meant to reflect experience and wisdom as gained by the character being roleplayed. In these RPGs the characters were important and death was a very real possibility. Levelling was an enjoyable reward for playing but the game itself was about the adventure and xp gains were largely just a metric representation of that adventure. There was no need for endgame content because when at the end of the game, the game ended. In today's MMOs, the character tends to be viewed as merely a stand in for the player. The common usage of the terms avatar and toon is a strong indication of this as well as the state of general chat. Character death also has little meaning, so levelling bears little relationship to the notion of experience and wisdom. In other words, modern MMOs are about the player not the character and levelling is a poor representation of player experience. Because we use the term endgame to refer to the content which is available once you reach level cap, this seems to indicate that there is some conception that the game is about the levelling process (once you reach level cap it is the end of the game) but player expectations don't seem to reflect this. I believe this is because successfully implementing levelling in an MMO requires clarity of vision concerning the game. If the game is about skill mechanics and largely PvP or team based PvE centred, then levelling should serve the purpose of a tutorial, introducing you to game mechanics at a manageable rate. Level cap should be achieved early on and players should, in terms of gameplay mechanics, have parity characters at a fairly rapid rate. A large part of the content should be designed for these parity characters after the level cap. Increasing difficulty should be overcome by using increased player skill and coordination not increasing character stats. As such this content should be the meat of the game, not endgame. On the other hand, if the game is largely about world exploration, lore, storyline and single player or small group PvE then levelling should serve the storyline and be used as a control on how that exploration occurs, either by rewarding certain playstyles or by controlling access to certain areas or goods through hard or soft controls. In this case levelling needs to be very carefully managed so as to be consistent throughout the storyline experience and not hinder rewarding gameplay through the implementation of grinding type gameplay. The basic game mechanics also need to be strong and rewarding enough to make replaying lower level characters enjoyable. It seems to me that BW/EA, like many other MMOs, do not have a clear understanding of the type of game they want SWTOR to be and levelling either creates disappointment concerning content at level cap or frustration at the levelling process. 2. Character classes, skill trees and skill access Again, this is about clarity of purpose. Character classes and skill trees are perfectly acceptable if the game is meant to be skill centred around game mechanics. However, in this case skill choices should be meaningful and we should have adequate access to skills which reflect our skills as players. For example, I was playing a fairly bog standard H4 around lvl 30 the other day with 3 players and a companion we were taking quite a long time to take down our opponents because two of us were specced as healers and the other was specced for tanking. We all knew exactly what the problem was, could have easily fixed it but the skill tree design and respec requirements actively discourage the player from experimenting with their character class or respecing to deal with unexpected or unusual situations, such as a lack of the "right type" of class. On the other hand, if SWTOR is meant to be about story, character and experiencing the adventure, many of the skill mechanics are inappropriate to the Star Wars universe. Generally, I think BW games are successful because of their stories, the game mechanics themselves are usually fairly basic and unobtrusive. WoW type mechanics are acceptable in WoW because the universe has a basis in gaming. Gamey concepts such as tanking or DPS make no sense when applied to lightsaber fighting. The application of such mechanics into SWTOR is rather jarring if you are trying to create a cinematic, story based experience.

It is very simple...the Imperial Agent is a spy. He has a British accent, a sardonic streak, a grumpy boss, a sexy secretary, a sleek luxury ship and plenty of flirt options. Do you really need to ask who the archetype for spies is?