CHOICE IS AN ILLUSION - not an RPG - MMO on rails

Talking about class quest here, and no, that's not what i'm talking about.

If somebody came to kill me / help me for killing/saving their cousin or SOMETHING, THAT would be nice to see. Or if I didn't help X and helped Y but killed A then it would = this ending.

Not this "Everybody basicly has the same story as everybody else, but you get to make some choices on this planet that will NEVER EVER be felt EVER as you go further along your quest"

But why do they matter to you? Do you have an emotional connection to the 384 House Organa hostages that you just let die? I don't care about them, I've never seen them, I'm not a member of House Organa, I haven't even been on Alderaan long enough to feel their plight or the consequences of the war. Caring about things isn't guaranteed by virtue of some guy telling me that I should care about them. I wanted to kill the evil House Thul Baron who kept taunting me a lot more than I wanted to save the poor captives that I cared nothing about, so I killed him instead. But you know what, doing the evil thing didn't feel evil. It didn't even feel right. I felt nothing at all because I didn't care one iota about anybody involved and I knew my evil choice wouldn't have any negative repercussions.

Do you understand why choices in these sort of games need to have GAMEPLAY CONSEQUENCES? It's to make the player care about things that they don't have the time, resources, or artistic skill to make me care about within the confines of a game. It's not easy to make a player of a game care about clouds of ones and zeroes, but it is easy to make the player care about gameplay consequences. You're fooling yourself if you actually think these decisions matter.

Tell me what exp areas overlap.

Balmorra 15-20
Nar Shadaa 20-24
Tatooine 24-28
Alderaan 28-32

etc

am I missing something?

Hence you must level where the developers say you must level, unless you don't want to level.. Going back to somewhere doesn't help because, while the quests/zone might be "cool", the exp would be pitiful.

You also can't jump ahead - say my level 24 is super powerful, I can't just skip Tatooine to go to Alderaan because all the quests there would be greyed/unavailable.

the force is strong with this one

you're stating the map shown levels as if they reflect on reality.
I was in Kaas until 18.
I was in balmorra from 18-26.
Compeltely skipped Nar Shadaa aside from class quest. Did about 40% of tat quests and skipped the rest and somehow made it to 33.

The MMO you're describing is a "sandbox" MMO.

SWTOR is not a sandbox MMO. SWG was a sandbox MMO and it failed.

Oblivion at least had certain characters flagged as non-killable, for the specific purpose of preserving the storyline. Have you tried killing Martin? Doesn't work out unless you specifically mod the game to make him killable.

Fallout 3 also had some unkillable characters, as I'm pretty sure you couldn't kill your dad in that game. Standard Bethesda coding is if the character is essential to the main storyline, they're immortal.

Yes you have infinite choice in TES series to steal from whomever you wish and kill whomever you wish. Unless of course that person is a quest giver or somehow decided by the game to be "important." Then they suddenly have the gift of immortality. It's not freedom if you can't kill EVERYONE!!!

EDIT: Damn, someone beat me to it!

Failed?

Most people who played before NGE would disagree.

In fact, as a sandbox MMO, SWG is the one i would cite as a success. Why? I cant really think of a better sandbox MMO.

The problem with Sandbox mmos is that the average MMO player is basically clueless they want direction they want quantifiable rewards.

most sandbox require you to give yourself the reward and wow basically ruined that for everyone, people want spoon feeding they want gratification even if its purple gear.

I personally prefered the older style mmos Daoc / EQ they were a bit more grinding but gave you more options to do at end game instead of "MUST FARM PURPLES!"

anywho thats my view most mmos are on rails and they will remain so while the developers chase the wow crowd for their money.

"You can change paths..."

Oh, so instead of picking every light side option, I can now pick every dark side option? How is that better? You are still striving to be DARK or LIGHT.

But not launching with neutral relics - but really by making the light/dark meter have ANY effect on gear at all, Bioware has influenced story decisions needlessly. It was a horrible game design choice. Period.