Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

BioWare has a long history of producing kick-ass RPGs. With recent hits like Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age, and older games like Baulder’s Gate and Knights of The Old Republic, it’s hard to argue with their success. MMOGs are a different beast altogether though, and many obstacles lay ahead for BioWare  if they hope to bring any of the roleplaying elements they are famous for to Star Wars The Old Republic.

To be clear, when I say roleplaying, I don’t mean typing “thee” and “thou” in chat channels or speaking in funny voices in voice chat. To me, roleplaying in an MMOG means that I have to choose sides, make decisions, and that those decisions mean something and can affect me down the road. They should come back to help or hurt me later in the game. BioWare is an expert at this with single player games, where your choice to kill someone or let them live will have consequences. The choice is yours, but whatever you do, you will have to face the music at some point. I want to see these same choices present in TOR!

Since MMOGs have moved away from the sandbox-style games, like Ultima Online, to more story-based pursuits, such as EverQuest, very little has actually changed as far as the roleplaying aspect. You could argue that the sandbox style games actually gave you more roleplaying options than the story based games that dominate MMOGs today. While there was no real quest line to follow, you were able to decide if you wanted to be good or evil. You did what you wanted and had to live with the consequences, good or bad. If you wanted to be evil and kill new players all day long, you could. People would remember your name and kill you on sight whenever you ran into them later. Play a good guy and help players out, and often times people would remember and give you discounts or lend a helping hand when you needed it.



With story based MMOGs, I had hoped games would give us direction and purpose without losing the ability to make choices. Alas this was not to be--most current quest-based games give you little more than a choice between taking a quest or not taking a quest. I want to take a quest to kill a target and then be faced with the decision whether to actually kill them or let them go. Either way, there could be consequences for my actions. Let me piss off an NPC and have to face him or his minions later. Let me refuse to take a quest from an NPC vendor and then be forced to pay higher prices from then on. I want the quests I do to have some impact. It doesn’t have to be some world shattering impact like in single player games, but let me make a choice that affects me. In most MMOGs right now, nothing I do affects anything other than my XP bar.

BioWare has promised that in TOR we will be able to make choices, take choices, and decide how we want to accomplish our quests. This sounds exciting and is exactly what I want to see in game. However, this is a monumental task for any developer to accomplish and, call me jaded, but as the old proverb goes, “Talk is cheap.” Still, BioWare has piqued my interest with their video showing 2 players inside a starship on a quest. During the quest, both players got to make decisions that affected how the quest played out--decisions that had consequences for the players! This was exciting and had me hooked. This was was a glimpse of the game I had longed for.

However, after watching the video many times, and drooling over actually seeing what I’ve wanted for years, questions start to arise. We saw a two man instance where each got to make a decision, but what about 5 man instances, or raids? Will each member of the party get to make a choice, or only a lucky few? How will PUGs work? Can some asshat in my PUG screw up the story for my character? It is hard to imagine that TOR could be much more than a single player game with the ability to take a friend or two along on certain quests. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to see a game like Dragon Age or Mass Effect 2 that I could play online with my friends, but that’s not really an MMOG. MMOGs require cooperative play, not just playing in the same place at the same time.

Of course, for any of this to work, TOR will have to make use of a lot of instancing. I have no problem with instances as long as they are designed for groups of 5+. The question is, can thousands of players play together, and every player still feel as though they are having some impact on their characters? These are all questions that need answers, but I guess we shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. I mean, what Bioware has shown us is already much more than we have gotten from any other AAA MMOG.

Damn BioWare! I swear every time I see a new MMOG in production that I will not get excited about it until it’s actually released. Promises are cheap and too easily broken, but I find myself wanting to believe that they can do it. They have shown they know what a good RPG is, but do they know what a good MMORPG is? Time will tell, but I have to admit that I find myself drinking the Kool-Aid. I believe BioWare can do it or, damn it, no one can.