Everquest had the "strongest" community of any MMORPG I can recall playing. I won't necessarily say it was the "best" community, just the strongest in terms of how many people would know each other and how strong those connections would be. No dungeons were instanced so you ran into other players in dungeons all the time. The game wasn't "quest based" -- it was "camp based". Whatever you wanted involved picking a spot in a dungeon and camping it for hours at a time. While this was a general source of complaint, it DID result in a strong community as the group camping the Froglok Lord room would need another player, or would announce that they're leaving so someone else could take it, etc. The endgame also wasn't instanced so guilds had to coordinate. Again, not a popular feature, but it did force guilds to talk to each other whereas in instanced end-games, they don't. Also, since nothing was instanced, there weren't exactly any group size restrictions. You could camp the Froglok Lord room with 6 people or 8 people or 10 people or 52 people if you really wanted to. It was more a question of diminishing returns. It was certainly easier to decide who was going on the next big raid: everyone was going because there wasn't some fixed "20 person" limit. You went with what you had. The MMORPG genre has solved all of "problems" listed above but their solutions destroyed the community. SWTOR is a 1-4 player game for the majority of people. I see other people in the world but I have absolutely no reason to interact with them in any way. Also, EQ PvP was a lot more brutal, so you tended to quickly form bonds with people just to fight off the bad guys. SWTOR PvP servers are the same as PvE servers 99% of the time because the two sides are well separated through most of the campaign (and population density per square mile is so low anyway). So the community isn't as strong because "community" has been designed out of the genre. Single player is in, community is out.

Anything from Best Buy will be good enough for that. Or low end Dell systems. She won't be running SWTOR on it but the biggest single expense of a gaming machine is the video card, which standard desktop computing doesn't need anyway.

Those are both low end graphics cards and I don't think you'll be amused -- particularly the first one with the ATI Radeon HD 3000. Take a hard look at the video card for whatever you get because for gaming, that's going to be your #1 component. Some suggestions: Intel Core i7 of any type = good Intel Core i5 of any type = should be good enough and it's cheaper Memory 4 GB DDR3 minimum -- 6 GB preferred Video card -- I'd suggest something like an nVidia GeForce GTX 480. Not totally top of the line but close enough. You can run everything full blast on that. I run an i7 with 4GB and the GTX 480 and everything runs fantastic. Full graphics. These days it's really not your processor or RAM that counts as much as your video card. Skimp on processor and RAM if you have to. Don't skimp on the video card. Pretty sure anything you get at Best Buy is going to have a crap video card. The two you linked certainly do.

This is like saying "I watched the show for 2 months and still don't like it, but I'm sure it will get better." Maybe it will. But most people will have quit watching it already. You can't have a bad launch. Not of a TV series, not of a book series and not of an MMORPG. And really I don't think this was a "bad launch" in Bioware's eyes. They launched with tons of content, a complete 1-50 game plus some endgame plus 3 PvP warfronts and they probably thought they were good to go. They just didn't recognize the flaws of this design, and perhaps underestimated how quickly even average players would reach the end of their storyline and then how little replayability the game had. If SWTOR had been a single player game with the same storyline, I think we'd all play it for a month or two and hail it as a success. I'm actually kind of baffled why they even wanted to do it as an MMORPG when there is so little to the game that requires (or utilizes!) the "massively multiplayer" concept. For most people this was a 1-4 player game.

>Asking about Rift vs SWTOR on a SWTOR forum.... Anyway, I actually find Rift to be the superior game: * Open world PvP is more fun as there are more places where the two teams interact * Community is stronger thanks to open world "rift" system that's basically like a public quest system * Interchangeable "soul" system means you aren't pigeonholed into a single class role * Not quite so obvious "mandatory running through huge zones" as a time sink. SWTOR is especially bad about this Rift is still going strong with my guild. Most of the SWTOR players have stopped playing (some went back to Rift). The only things SWTOR has going for it, really are: a) It's Star Wars b) Voice quests are nice

It is kind of funny, really, playing the Empire. I often find myself thinking "there's no way this group of disfunctional psychopaths could keep an Empire intact for more than about a week". It's not just that they are malicious, short-sighted morons, but they also spend about as much time infighting as they do anything else. You won't even get out of the Sith Academy without killing like 3 students and your teacher. And the reasoning seems fairly shallow: emotion gives you the best power over the Force, fine, I can buy that, and fear and hatred are the strongest emotions so we're going to go with that for everything we do, all the time. No other emotions can possibly have any use, just those two. It's a bit silly after a while, really. Although it is a bit fun sometimes. Every MMORPG has quests where you just think, "Can't I just kill this guy?" As a Sith, sometimes, you can. Also, Bounty Hunters are not particularly stupid or evil -- just their bosses are. Agents can go either way as well. Really it's just the Sith that are the extreme morons of the galaxy and of course they're the ones in charge.

Not terribly creative, I suppose, but my name, "Slamz", dates back to ye olden times, when I was signing up to play Everquest with a bunch of friends from work. We were: Slamz Poundz Smackz Thudz ...all playing as trolls on a PvP server (Vallon Zek). I'm the only one who kept the name long term.

Frankly, the game was not very inspired. That's the root problem. Reading about Guild Wars 2 has brought me a lot of new hope (seriously, go read about it). They looked at everything MMORPGs do and said, "Is that necessary? Is there a better way to do that?" and from the sound of it, they've come up with some really wonderful ideas that sound like they'll be a lot of fun. SWTOR did not really have any wonderful new ideas. It's standard MMORPG gameplay. Like you, I've been in MMORPGs for a long time -- since UO. Going through static quests where I blow up the Republic artillery batteries only to have them magically fix themselves and start firing again before I can even get out of sight of them has just worn too thin for me. The Warfronts are very well done -- easily the best instanced PvP setups I've seen in any of these games -- but there's only 3 of them. And they're all pretty short. It's like playing Counterstrike on a 3 map rotation. It doesn't matter how good the maps are -- if there's only 3 of them, I'm going to get tired of them fairly quickly. (And I'm one of the few people who seemed to really love Huttball. But after playing it at least 200 times... meh. Would it have killed them to launch with 10 PvP maps? It's not like they're very big. "Civil War" x10 would still be smaller than Tatooine alone!) And I tried leveling up other characters but it's just too much of the same content all over again. Also: TOO MUCH RUNNING omg It was faintly annoying on my first character. It is driving me absolutely insane on my second character. Go to Dromund Kaas! Talk to this guy for like 60 seconds! Go to Nar Shaddah! Do something! Go back to Dromund Kaas! Talk to this guy for 60 seconds again! (Couldn't he call me on my holo communicatator?!) Go to some ship in the middle of nowhere! Now back to Dromund Kaas! Just a long series of really long speeder rides. And I find it extra infuriating when they decouple speeder routes apparently JUST to make me run between connection points. Maybe MAYBE I can power through this second character. I'm only doing it because a friend of mine decided to pick up the game and I haven't had the heart to tell her that I don't want to play anymore. :-p But yeah, I predicted server merges by the 6 month mark. I don't think it'll take that long. My guild, too, has gone from having a couple dozen online to somewhere between 1-5. Our Rift population is stronger now than our SWTOR population. What can Bioware do? Other than go back in time and think hard about inventing some better game systems? Hmmm. More PvP content would go a long way with me and my guild. Ilum is a disgrace. Not creative or immersive at all. Warfronts are great but if they're going to be this small, we really need more like 10 of them, running on some sort of rotation. The complete lack of open world PvP (and thus the complete lack of "Wars" in our "Star Wars") is detrimental but probably can't be fixed at this point -- an improved, much larger Ilum that's open to everyone and buffs everyone up to 50 would be a great way to go, though. PvE-wise, they're going to be releasing more stand-alone instanced content but, ya know, I dunno about you guys but that doesn't do it for me anymore. There's just nothing "massively multiplayer" about any of it. I don't even know why they made this game an MMORPG when it could have worked just as well as a Guild Wars 1 style "everyone trundle off into their own instance" game. I rarely see other people and when I do, I have no reason to care. Just staying in sync with my friend is hard enough. We don't always play the same hours so we are forever having to get back in sync. It's really not much fun.

They don't wanna pay for it. And modern MMORPG PvE design does not require communication for the most part -- most of it doesn't even require grouping. (I realize "soloable everything!" is the trend but it's also why most of these newer MMORPGs have no talking and therefore no community. There's nothing to talk about because your fellow gamers are completely meaningless to you.)

Similarly, I like to say that how people act online (when they are basically anonymous) says everything you need to know about them as a human being -- that is what they would do in real life if they could get away with it.

In order of as-I-think-of-them: UO -- 6 months? Never got deeply into UO. Good concept but kinda meh implementation in a lot of ways. Everquest - 3 years. Did maybe 3 months on a PvE server then 2 years on a PvP server (VZ) then about another 9 months on another PvP server (SZ) DAOC -- 3 months. Hit the endgame and realized I did not like my Warden for PvP. The thought of leveling a second character 1-40 to re-join PvP was too depressing and I quit (at the time, there was no PvP 1-40). Asheron's Call 2 -- 3 months. Fun for open world PvP, actually, but they launched with an incomplete game and couldn't fill it in fast enough. WOW - 3 years on a PvP server. WOW's open world PvP was reasonably good and active (relative to a lot of other games) and that helped keep it interesting. Planetside - 2-3 years off and on. Great PvP game. One of the best if not the best, assuming you don't mind shooters. Their inability to make good content updates eventually wore it down. Pirates of the Burning Sea -- 1.5 years? Good game, ship combat was fun, but somewhat limited by the forced 6v6 / 24v24 battle setup. Makes it hard unless you can always have exactly 6 people ready to go out and fight. EVE -- 4 months? Played as a pirate. We had some reasonable success and it had some good moments but too much downtime and the combat is just really one-dimensional. PvE combat is kinda necessary to raise funds and it's stupid boring, even for PvE. LOTRO -- about 5 days in beta, lol. "Oh look another generic PvE MMORPG. I'm out." Star Trek Online -- 2 months. Played as Klingon. Buggy / very little PvP content. PvE content was very canned. DCUO -- 2 months. Actually a very enthralling PvE game and I don't normally like PvE. Open world PvP was pretty fun too, as were the PvP battlegrounds. Mainly quit because the endgame content needed more people than we had -- couldn't get my guild interested in trying it. Could'a used more PvP content too, of course (this is true of almost every game). SWG -- 3 months? Not enough PvP. Lovely crafting system though. PvE was a complete bore. They forgot the "war" part of "Star Wars". Every Cryptic game ever (COH, COV, Champions...) -- about 2-3 months each. They're always pretty fun but also pretty canned and they run out of entertainment fast. Age of Conan -- about 2 months. Kinda like AC2, they launched with an incomplete game and didn't fill it in quite fast enough. Good combat mechanics but no real PvP content (you'd think a Conan game would launch with good PvP...) Battleground Europe (aka World War 2 Online) -- about a year total here and there. It's a game I can keep going back to. It's a "simulation", not an action game, but has lots of fun elements to it. Aion -- about 3 months. Endgame PvP was underwhelming. PvE was grindy. Warhammer -- about 3 months. Public quests were good but too shallow. Warfronts were good but got boring. Open world PvP was mostly just big empty fields, so that got boring fast. Standard PvE was just too dull to carry on with. Rift -- about 3 months. PvP also underwhelming. PvE not interesting enough. "Rift" system was cool but they could have done a lot more with it. SWTOR -- looking like another 3 monther. Lacks PvP content. PvE content good the first time through but not much replay. I've never particularly enjoyed repetitive instanced PvE content either so the endgame doesn't thrill me. The warfronts were really good but I've played them about 200 times each and am about bored to death with em -- they should have launched with at least 6 maps imo. (Ilum really sucks. Spent 30 minutes there and never bothered going back.) I'm sure I'm missing some too but that's the high points. Next game: Guild Wars 2. Looks really really good and after my history of MMOGs, I don't often say that.

If you rent a VOIP server, what provider do you use? Would you recommend that provider? Which of these three programs do you favor, and why? My answers: I use NationVoice.com for Vent server rental. Their performance and customer support has been pretty solid but they've double-billed me twice (that I've caught...) and they don't seem to have plans for Teamspeak or Mumble. I've been using Vent for years because years ago it was hands down superior to TeamSpeak. Vent has better codecs (people sound better/clearer). Problem is Vent hasn't changed much in 6 years. TeamSpeak has made good client improvements and it's a much better "client for gamers" now. Mumble is a new entry that I don't know much about, but I hear Goonswarm (from EVE) uses it so maybe there's something to it (or maybe it's just cheap).

Several factors: 1) Cultural change in society. Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_disinhibition_effect aka "John Gabriel's Greater Internet F__wad Theory" Anonymity seems to turn people into jerks. 11 years ago the internet was fairly new to people and not a major influence on most people's lives. Now it's some people's entire lives and it has had a detrimental effect on their ability to act like rational human beings. 2) Changes in game design In EQ, when we went somewhere, we just all went. Plane of Fear? 47 people online? I guess we bring 47 people! Sebilis and we have 13 people online? I guess we go with 13 people and work it out when we get there! (You 6 over here, you 6 over there, odd man can sit and help and roll on loot til a spot opens.) These days everything is fixed group sizes. You got 6 people? Well tough. Group size is 4. The instance will only let 4 people in. The encounter is tailored for 4 people so the 2 leftovers can't do it at all. Big raid? 20 slots! Not 19. Not 21. 20. I think this creates a big sense of "now I need you / now I don't". Or worse -- "now I can use your help / now I literally can't use your help because the game prevents it". So I think what we see in MMORPG communities is a combination of the degradation of society and the influence of poorly thought out game design. SWTOR is really not a good game for just logging in and making friends and hanging out and having fun together. It's far too restrictive for that. Group size is 4! You're the fifth? Sod off, you!

The interesting thing, I think, is that Everquest felt like more of a roleplaying game than all of the modern quest-based MMORPGs. For those who didn't play it, Everquest (despite the name) had almost no quests. These days it would be called "a grindfest" but the lack of story-driven questing basically left you free to roleplay. (Ditto for Ultima Online, btw.) That is, the story was not constantly contradicting your roleplay attempts. There were not a thousand people flying the same title for killing some dragon because the concept of titles didn't exist. Granted the same old kill-the-boss-15-times-to-collect-all-his-gear mechanic was there but at least you weren't getting it thrown in your face that "the orcs are attacking the town! save us! (kill orcs 0/20)" while said orcs are clearly just standing in a field doing nothing and a thousand people do the same quest. (One of the opening quests in LOTRO turned me off to that game real quick -- "We're being overrun by wolves!" and I go out there and there are so many players killing wolves that I find myself waiting for them to spawn and then beat someone else to the punch. I mean really, can't I just go back and be like, "I think your wolf situation is being handled. Next?") "Sandbox" style games are probably the best for roleplay. I'm sure a lot of people consider games like that to be boring but then a lot of people probably don't like roleplaying so maybe there's a connection. The more things you are free to do, the better the roleplaying experience, I think. The more "guided" you are, the less free you are to roleplay. A totally walled-in storyline which you must follow and which has no real branches is not a roleplaying game at all, anymore than reading Lord of the Rings would be said to be a roleplaying game. You're just following someone else's set story. EVE may actually be a great example of a roleplaying game. Granted it's mostly PvP but if you want to roleplay, say, an industrial manufacturer, a galactic trader, a pirate or maybe just some muscle for an existing corporation, you can certainly do that in EVE. You are clearly in a spaceship, clearly docking with this spaceport, doing real manufacturing, taking it to market to sell it, dodging real pirates who really want to blow you up, etc. If "roleplaying a space cowboy" is your idea of a good time, EVE will facilitate it. (Granted EVE has plenty of other problems but ruining your roleplay experience with faulty game mechanics is not, I think, a prominent issue.) "Hardcore mode" is not necessarily "better roleplaying". Discussion: "reality" vs "realism". "Reality" is the real world, here and now. You die, you're dead, no respawn. "Realism", in the context of a fictional roleplaying environment, just means there's some internal consistency. Wizards throwing fireballs from their hands is not reality but it can be realistic within the framework of a fantasy roleplaying game. Or to go the other way, microwave ovens may be part of our reality but they would not be realistic within a medieval fantasy roleplaying game. So dying and respawning I'm fine with, within the framework of a roleplaying game where every time I die this droid probe shows up and zaps me back to life. Why this happens for me and my companion and not the 5,000 NPCs I have murdered is not explained but I can assume there is an explanation (I'm special!) I'd say most people who do hardcore mode are doing it for the challenge, not for the improved roleplay experience. I think a game could be invented where perma-death was just what happened to everyone, but it's not necessary for roleplaying. Although it would be nice if the respawning was at least briefly explained (as I believe it was in Aion). "Welcome to the Republic, we have implanted you with this special chip...." As I said early on, a lot of obvious roleplay flaws could be solved with 2 lines of text. Kinda like Star Trek "Treknology" -- everything has an explanation. You can roleplay in a Star Trek universe because the universe has internal consistency. Warp drives aren't part of our reality but they are realistic within the framework of Star Trek (antimatter drives! Warpin' space in front of the ship! Lets it go faster than light without really going faster than light! Etc!) Stuff like this wouldn't make or break a roleplaying game, really, but if I was a major software developer famous for roleplaying games, I like to think I would sit down and examine the elements of my new upcoming game and say, "Is there anything simple we can do to improve the roleplay experience?" Bioware didn't seem terribly inclined to do that. This game has all the standard flaws.

Stuff like this occurs to me all the time. There's that Civil War (warfront) quote (at least on the Empire side) where the guy is saying something about how we are going to capture this big gun and turn it to our side and use it to wipe out the Rebel fleet but that the "Rebels have anticipated this move." Yes, I have actually said, in /say, "What! Again! How do the rebels ALWAYS anticipate this move? Who's the traitor?" Most of the time I just ignore it but it's like I complained about earlier -- if I'm having to suspend belief, that's fine and normal and expected. If MY CHARACTER is having to suspend belief, then we have gone one level too far and I officially declare that this is A Bad Roleplaying Game. I guess the question is: "Can you have enough heroic moments without having a custom built quest system designed to give them to you on a platter?" So in a linear quest game, like SWTOR, the dragon is going to attack the town and its fate is already sealed. You are going to kill it (you might wipe a couple times but in the end, you are going to beat it). There is no option where the dragon simply destroys the town and flies off and leaves you sitting there. You got the quest, you found the sword, you traveled to the town, you spoke the word that made the dragon 80% weaker than normal, you killed the dragon, on to the next quest step. If you die, you just retry it until you get it. In a dynamic game, the dragon is just going to attack the town and either you stop him or you don't. You aren't "destined" to stop him. The dynamic game world can handle either scenario: you stop him, town saved, pat on back, wenches everywhere OR you don't stop him, town destroyed, dragon flies off and poops on you on the way out. Maybe you'll have a heroic moment and maybe you won't. Is that not sufficient? In fact, I think I just had an epiphany. What we need here is just another word for the type of game that SWTOR is. I would call it a "story game". Story game: A game where the outcome is pre-determined. You can't NOT have this outcome, short of quitting the game. You are basically playing through a set story. (You must kill the dragon in order to proceed with the story.) Roleplaying game: A game where the outcome is indeterminate. You are roleplaying your way through various events and how your input impacts these events has not been set in stone. (The game can handle you killing the dragon or you not killing the dragon.) I reject the notion that you can't have heroic moments in a roleplaying game. In fact, I would suggest that there are MORE heroic moments in a roleplaying game, because you weren't destined to win. Killing some boss in SWTOR is made out to be "heroic" but is it really heroic if literally everyone did it and there was no option other than success?