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In SWTOR the "Real" Game starts at level 1


Klarick

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Those that are new to MMO's may not fully appreciate this topics title. Let me explain. In most MMO's the "Real" game does not start until you reach the highest level and begin running the "so-called end-game content". Take the king of MMOS, WoW, as an example. The road from 1-85 is an excruciating one where nothing you do will have any impact on your toon at level 85. It is called a "grind" for a reason. WoW is not the only culprit here. Most MMOs follow this same broken paradigm.

 

SWTOR breaks the paradigm and sets a new one.

 

In SWTOR the "Real" game starts the moment you see the first cut-scene of your character. Starting at level 1 the decisions you make FORM your character. Each mission, each answer you chose has an impact. The game starts at level 1 -- not at the level end-cap! People, this is HUGE! It is genre-setting! It blows away the current MMO paraqdigm of grinding to end-cap levels.

 

This is why SWTOR succeeds. It is ground breaking in its approach. It amazingly combines the single player aspect with the MMO one. Dont let the complainers fool you either. There is an absolute TON of group content in this game. Yes -- It is an MMO in every aspect of the word EXCEPT it breaks the grind.

 

Your SWTOR life begins at level 1.

Edited by Klarick
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Those that are new to MMO's may not fully appreciate this topics title. Let me explain. In most MMO's the "Real" game does not start until you reach the highest level and begin running the "so-called end-game content". Take the king of MMOS, WoW, as an example. The road from 1-85 is an excruciating one where nothing you do will have any impact on your toon at level 85. It is called a "grind" for a reason. WoW is not the only culprit here. Most MMOs follow this same broken paradigm.

 

SWTOR breaks the paradigm and sets a new one.

 

In SWTOR the "Real" game starts the moment you see the first cut-scene of your character. Starting at level 1 the decisions you make FORM your character. Each mission, each answer you chose has an impact. The game starts at level 1 -- not at the level end-cap! People, this is HUGE! It is genre-setting! It blows away the current MMO paraqdigm of grinding to end-cap levels.

 

This is why SWTOR succeeds. It is ground breaking in its approach. It amazingly combines the single player aspect with the MMO one. Dont let the complainers fool you either. There is an absolute TON of group content in this game. Yes -- It is an MMO in every aspect of the word EXCEPT it breaks the grind.

 

Your SWTOR life begins at level 1.

 

 

No, 3 hours of cut scenes about go collect 10 X on each planet gets old very quickly.

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Those that are new to MMO's may not fully appreciate this topics title. Let me explain. In most MMO's the "Real" game does not start until you reach the highest level and begin running the "so-called end-game content". Take the king of MMOS, WoW, as an example. The road from 1-85 is an excruciating one where nothing you do will have any impact on your toon at level 85. It is called a "grind" for a reason. WoW is not the only culprit here. Most MMOs follow this same broken paradigm.

 

SWTOR breaks the paradigm and sets a new one.

 

In SWTOR the "Real" game starts the moment you see the first cut-scene of your character. Starting at level 1 the decisions you make FORM your character. Each mission, each answer you chose has an impact. The game starts at level 1 -- not at the level end-cap! People, this is HUGE! It is genre-setting! It blows away the current MMO paraqdigm of grinding to end-cap levels.

 

This is why SWTOR succeeds. It is ground breaking in its approach. It amazingly combines the single player aspect with the MMO one. Dont let the complainers fool you either. There is an absolute TON of group content in this game. Yes -- It is an MMO in every aspect of the word EXCEPT it breaks the grind.

 

Your SWTOR life begins at level 1.

 

Amen.

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No, 3 hours of cut scenes about go collect 10 X on each planet gets old very quickly.

 

All I can say is that you and I are obviously playing a different game. In my SWTOR the missions are incredibly well written and voice-acted. WHat BW has done here is nothing short of spectacular.

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All I can say is that you and I are obviously playing a different game. In my SWTOR the missions are incredibly well written and voice-acted. WHat BW has done here is nothing short of spectacular.

 

WOW ,you must set the bar awefully low for "spectacular".

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SWTOR breaks the paradigm and sets a new one.

 

I agree with the basic idea you have here, that the game is a fun ride from 1st to 50th. But SWTOR is not the first game to do this.

 

In fact CoH is the same way, and that was released before WoW was, by 6 months. CO also is much more about the ride then the destination.

 

So yes, SWTOR does it right IMO because there's a point in playing from 1st to 50, and it's not just there to make you waste time until end game. But it's also not something new that's never been done before.

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All I can say is that you and I are obviously playing a different game. In my SWTOR the missions are incredibly well written and voice-acted. WHat BW has done here is nothing short of spectacular.

 

I absolutely love the story and cut scenes... Pause for Effect... For Class Quests, and maybe some of the planet wide side quests. Everything else is tripe, garbage written to hold up te promise of a fully voiced MMO. They would lose NO Fans, or awesomeness by making side quests, EXACTLY like WoW. and Class Quests fully VO and Cutscenes. I dont want 5 minutes of dialogue to explain why I need to get 5 bombs and put them on 5 corpses. I dont give a flying ****, however you better damn believe I care why tarro blood wont just **** off!

 

I'm looking right at you Tarro, you smug piece of crap.

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What happens when you hit level cap? That is the difference between a single player game and a MMO. End game IS the game in an MMO, everything else is prologue.

 

So, WoWs end-game has been going on for the last 8 years?

WoW's raids, where less than 6% of the player base (Blizzards numbers -- not mine) ever see it, is end game?

Changing your toons play-style with every patch is end-game?

 

The only "true" end-game that any game can have is PvP. I will let you figure that statement out, as it would take a bit to explain it fully.

 

Your statement of End-Game IS the game is why MMOs of today fail. This paradigm was created by Blizzard, who because of their paradigm now has to spend months upon months and spend a huge budget in creating so called end-game content every two months. After all that time and money they sit back and watch their "end-game" players burn through it in 2 weeks then head to the forum and scream for more.

 

You have missed the point of the topic dear Sir. This Paradigm NEEDS to be broken or we will all be stuck playing WoW forever. BW took a chance with SWTOR. They have decided to attack that paradigm.

 

I for one believe they succeeded.

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WOW ,you must set the bar awefully low for "spectacular".

 

Not really, VA is bloody hard, I've tried it for a few mods and adverts, considering the volume involved the voicework in TOR -is- pretty bloody spectacular. Although I will say - for the love of pete, stop using whoever it is who voiced Bastila Shan and now seems to appear as a random character every few levels, or at the very least, stop giving her parts which call for an English accent. It is literally painful to listen to for anyone from the UK, she mangles it.

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No, 3 hours of cut scenes about go collect 10 X on each planet gets old very quickly.
What game are YOU playing, because it sounds nothing like SWTOR...

All I can say is that you and I are obviously playing a different game. In my SWTOR the missions are incredibly well written and voice-acted. WHat BW has done here is nothing short of spectacular.
Exactly!

What happens when you hit level cap? That is the difference between a single player game and a MMO. End game IS the game in an MMO, everything else is prologue.
Oh really??? I'm not sure what you expected, but you clearly misunderstood what BIOWARE were going for here. The style and structure of this game has been known for over 2 years and yet you don't get it.

 

Perhaps this is the wrong game for people and people of your ilk.

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No, 3 hours of cut scenes about go collect 10 X on each planet gets old very quickly.

 

Amen.

 

^My thoughts exactly^

 

The game is great, I'm hooked, I'll pay, but really, it doesn't feel like kotor in how the objectives work. In kotor, you had huge objective. They don't make you do anything else. you do it voluntarily. You don't ever have to kill anyone in Kotor (Except maybe the endgame boss). You only have to find the starmaps/lost jedi on the planets. Also, the missions past your origin world are totally random. On the origin world, I feel like I'm getting closer to defeating the Flesh Raiders, because I'm helping not only to thin their ranks, but also helping some jedi learn about their culture/find a base/smash elixir potions. I feel like I did made an impact, not just filler so we can p(l)ay longer. Past there, for example, I feel just like WoW with way better combat and graphics. Now I always hear people saying WoW has better graphics and combat, okay, sure, at level 85, it's beast. If you don't get my hooked by the first 2 days with all that great stuff, then I won't care about the joys of endgame, Ill have to deal with the grind of mid game!. On Balmorra as an Agent, I'm doing random things at first to some resistance, then to some cyborgs, and then to some droid factory and dockworkers (lol?). From doing chores for other characters to random filler quests, I'm forgetting why the hell I'm on this rock. Oh yeah, to kill some guy, even though I had that no reason why I couldn't just journey through the whole map looking for it (And bring an army, since I wouldn't've grinded all my way 5 levels :) ), like kotor. There was no filler, there were about 5 missions max per planet in kotor (kotor 1 only, wayyy more in kotor 2), it just took a long time to complete them, with combat on the way.

Edited by Zunayson
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In themepark MMOs, the game basically starts at or near max level or when you reach a certain point. EQ2 it is max AA points, EQ1 it is around 85 with a set amount of AA points. WOW it is end game because that is the way it is set up. Same thing with Rift. LOTRO is a bit different even though it is a themepark game, but the main grouping part starts at around 60 and the raiding part stats at max levels.

 

Sandbox MMOs start as soon as you create your character.

 

You want well written quests, go play the original Everquest game. No "kill x number of beasts" there. In that game you had to read the NPC dialogue, then actually type something in to trigger something else. Then you had to think about the quest, and how it relates to the game world and lore then you had to search for possible quest components, and you would advance to the next part of the quest.

 

I can assure you, those quests were better written and better implemented than the tasks you have in TOR simply because the game mechanics allowed for players to think rather than react.

 

Entire gaming communities were created because of the quest system EQ had over a decade ago. There was no quest radar, no quest journal, no map icons, no hints when you moused over the mobs. You had your wits and your friends....of course, once the quest was completed you could just use a website.

 

That was a real quest system. I like TOR's system because I like Bioware's voice overs, but if you played EQ around 1999, you know exactly what I am talking about. That game also had a lot of built in frustration, something TOR does not have.

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I agree OP, most epic leveling experience I've ever had.

 

However, if that comes at the cost of end game being awful, this will be a short lived game. I really hope it sticks around and becomes a joint powerhouse in the MMO genre with that other game, but if they don't hit a homerun with end game by about the 2 month mark (not saying it's not already awesome btw, I don't have a 50 yet.) they might die out.

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if you think cut scenes and voice acting make the quest anything but "pick up 10x item" or "kill 10x boars" youre fooling yourself.

 

Agreed. The story is great not beyond the capital world, and is too slow paced, because they couldn't get a long term story written in, just "track down these guys". And quite frankly, it gets boring. I'd rather be tracking 30 things, and get 1 of them per day. Much more satisfying. I'm sorry, but really. 99.99999999999you9get9the9point999 percent of all quests in this game are "Click A of Bs", "Kill C of Ds to loot Es", or "Walk to point F", or, on God-Forbid, although hopefully on a rare occasion, the plain "kill G of Hs". Every. Single. EVERY. SINGLE ONE! FIND ME ONE WHERE THAT ISN'T THE GIST OF IT!

 

/nerdgasm rage

Edited by Zunayson
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And if you think that this game is only that then you're playing it wrong...

 

P.S. I have yet to see a Boar IG, what planet are they on?

 

It's called Azeroth, a planet adde in the new game expansion sleighed for 2004. The technology is really outdated, though. Oh, wait...

 

On a serious note, do you mean to say there's more to this game then cutscenes, dialogue, and the tedious WoW quests?

Edited by Zunayson
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For me any MMORPG starts at level 1, I never understood why people even bother playing a MMO if they don't want to level. If that was what people really wanted gamemakers should just take out the leveling part. But they don't, because they also know lots of people just enjoy leveling and exploring.

 

Only a very small group of MMO players these days indeed raids on regular basis. I think those people are actually afraid that raiding will become less and less important for gamemakers. Raids cost a lot of effort to design and why bother when less than 10% of the players actually gets to see that "famous" endgame. And in my opinion raiding is just übergrinding. Most games including WoW make you do the same raid ten times or more to gather a few pieces of gear, which are worthless once an expansion with new levels is released.

 

I heard that SWTOR wants to increase the amount of planets and add a lot of content that way. I really hope that will be the plan eventually and not some dungeons where people have to go in forever to show how able they are.

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