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

Only if you have a bad DM.

I guess you're saying that there's nothing BW can do to stop being a bad DM, eh?

What about the class relic you can make from datacrons? I don't think there's an alignment requirement there...

This is spot on. Unfortunately the success of WoW has saddled the genre with millions of players whose uninformed opinions are dictating the future of these games, much to their detriment.

He is saying that he did not expect to be obliged to follow a single line of quests all the way through 50. He is saying that he simply had to be at the predetermined planet and area at each level and did not have a choice. In WOW you have choices where to level, what quests to take, what quests to avoid etc. This is not an illusion it is how WOW was made from day one.

See here is the problem

You and your 5 buddies do not speak for the MMO Community at large!

SWG failed (and long before the NGE, the NGE came about because of SWGs spectacular failure).

It opened and immediately lost 70% of its subs in the first moth

by end of 3rd month 80% was gone

THATS FAILURE 101

Doesnt matter if you and your 5 buddies liked the game, 80% didnt

90% if you got 1 year mark GONE

Combat upgrade? Made to stop the subscription loss
Village and playable jedi? Made to stop the subsctiption loss
NGE? Made to stop the subscription loss

The ONLY TIME in SWGs history it can be called a success is opening day! And even then Id limit it to first 18 hours of opening day cause by 6 pm when the stores closed, the writing was on the wall (and the website) this ride was going down the drain FAST!

So you and your 5buddies aside

SWG wasnot great fun
SWG was not a huge success
SWG is exactly what you DONT FOLLOW OR COPY if your making a successful MMORPG!

You want a game that isn't on rails...go play EvE. I've been playing EvE since 2008, and that game doesn't hold your hand at all, but there's always a flip side to every situation. In EvE, another player can blow up your ship, loot the wreck dry and fly off laughing at you, leaving you with nothing to show for it after you worked days and days to build the money to buy it and fit it.

What I've come to understand over the years is that the vast majority of "hardcore" MMO players will cry like little girls in that situation, so be careful what you wish for.

For games with heavy story elements, the "game on rails" system is the way to go, because what are you gonna do when Johnny Dangerous steals your storyline lightsaber, all your credits, and kicks you to the curb naked in the streets of Nar Shaddaa? How would you recover from that with no gear or cash? If the game wasn't on rails, griefers would spend every moment trying to break your story.

^^^ This

In beta they wiped our characters at least five times that I can remember. I can tell you that there are many many many choices like some of the ones referred to in this thread. I for one really like it and don't feel like it's "on rails".

The success and popularity of WoW is mainly dictating the future of successful, popular mmos. There remain plenty of non-AAA, niche MMOs that don't take from WoW's design. Unfortunately, most people that whine about how popular MMOs like WoW are 'ruining' mmos don't so much glance at the Indie MMO community.

What you're describing, though, would be a game with a billion-dollar budget and would likely be in development longer than three Duke Nukem Forevers.

There is no SINGLE PLAYER game that gives you this much freedom and choice, and the ones that try take 5+ years to develop in most cases.

If every choice you make matters in huge ways, then it compounds the complexity of the storyline tenfold. You're not looking for an MMO. You're looking for a game with even more freedom than Skyrim.

Furthermore, a lot of the decisions you make are important to YOU. Isn't that what ROLE PLAYING is all about? My smuggler has been laid twice so far, but I could've easily steered him away from that if I felt like it. Does it matter to the game? No, but it matters to ME and I'm the player, here.

My thoughts on choices, in dialogues especially:

First few times there were choices, it was cool. I liked being able to choose cuz it gave me the feel I was actually saying it instead of watching 2 people talk. But, as the game progressed, it became less and less fun. Atm I'm just spacing through dialogues and pressing random things.

Why? Because in the end it doesn't matter. As said before your choices have very little consequence. It even goes that far that in some conversations, the NPC will say the same line, regardless of what you just said to it. You can say whatever you want, the quest will stay the same, and hell, even the NPC's mood will be the same.

Light and dark side options are the exceptions, they sometimes have a small effect. For example on Taris, as empire player, you can choose to kill Thana (if that was her name). If you do so, you get an extra fight, which will last 20 sec or so, and then you tell the quest giver that you killed her. That's all. After that quest, you wouldn't have seen Thana regardless of if you killed her or left her alive. When this really got into my mind, I stopped caring about the choices in this game.