What the hell? Anyway...
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Star Wars is my favorite series of movies and despite what feelings people have about Lucas and his movies, they hold a special place in my heart. But today were here to talk about the goods and bads of the Star Wars game franchises. To cover them all would be a huge task and time consuming, so right now I am just going to focus on the RPG realm of games, mainly of the MMO brand. Now I already mentioned this in a ealier post while talking about Bioware how the two Knights of the Old Republic games were some of the best, fun, and re playable Star Wars games, let alone RPG games, that I have played in years. When I found out that Bioware would be helming a MMO based in the KoToR universe, I nearly wet myself.
The reason I got super excited about this was because I played Star Wars Galaxies. If you too have played, you will understand where I am going with this. They sucked. Sucked big time. You would think a Star Wars MMO where I can go and see such famous places as the Mos Eisley cantina or help Han Solo and Chewbacca on a mission? This is going to be the best thing ever. Oh how wrong we were. I ended up getting picked to help beta test the game before it went live, and at the time it was the first MMO I had ever played. I knew of Everquest and UO and had watched numerous people play both, but I had never experienced one myself, so when I found out that Star Wars, my favorite franchise ever, was making one, I had to delve into it head first. I was happy to test the game, I got to play for free and before 100's of other people storm(tropped) the servers on release day. At first glance the game was fun. I had played RPG's so I understood the basic's of skills, combat etc etc, but this was different. The way you learned skills was odd. Now I played this game almost 5-7 years ago so I'm a bit rusty on the info so bare with me. You would find a trainer, say a Smuggler trainer, they would give you the ability to be a smuggler and then from there it would break off into four trees. Each tree a subset of the class. Smugglers had pistol fighting, spice mining/making and some other crap that I didn't care about. But to learn new spells, you would basically have to master that block of skill, by using it over and over and over again. So to "rank up" in pistols I would have to stand outside a mynock hive and shoot for 10 hours. It was terrible. Even worse was any of the hand to hand combat techniques for the lack of weapons.
The classes in the game were diverse to say the least. The hardcore PvP players could join either the Rebels or Imperial Army and don Storm Trooper armor and engange in battles. There were crafting professions for people who wanted to thrive and make money on the virtual market. Spanning from armor/weapon crafting to builders who could make vending machine shops or even houses. For the more casual player who wanted a RP experience there were classes such as hair/make up artist, musician and bartender. You were not locked into any one class, and could drop your current one at anytime to pick up and learn a new one. This is where the game fell apart. The first nail in the coffin was there was no Jedi/Sith. For a Star Wars game, thats what everyone wanted. Thats what made the Jedi Knight games so fun, taking up a Lightsaber and blasting through enemies with crazy flourishes was so much fun. The game developers had a good reason to not include them which I agree with, there would be to many. No one would want to play any of the other classes. It would just be Jedi and Sith everywhere you look. It breaks the mythos of the universe. Jedi were not plentiful like they once were. But again, falling to what people wanted because no MMO would be complete without whinning and crying, Jedi's were introduced. And not via patch or anything, one day someone killed a Dark Trooper and happened to find a holocon in the loot. When opened up it said something like "The path to blah blah blah is through blah blah blah" picking one of the numerous professions as a hint. That person dropped whatever class they were and started grinding out whatever the holocron told them. Once finished another message came up telling them the next profession to master. The problem with this is it was TOTALLY RANDOM. Each person was different, and no two paths were the same. Once the "path" was unlocked, it still counted and could then be dropped to learn the next one. Thus began the Great SWG Grind.
Everyone stopped playing the game as a game, and basically set up macros to auto level skills and max everything out, drop class, restart the game. Mind you again on first release there were almost 15+ classes? When I got bored of combat and PvP I made my way to a small cantina on Tatooine and settled down as a musician. As a musician there was no real way yo make money other than if people who came into the cantina tipped you, which caused a lot of spam word bubble messages asking for tips. What I came to find was that after an hour of playing I had made no money due to the fact that 90% of the people in the place were auto-macro set up dancing or playing music on loop. The game had become a shell of its already crappy self, and I decided to quit. It wasn't fun anymore, not that it ever was, but still I spent about 1 1/2 running on foot out to Obi-Wan's hut out in the middle of nowhere just to see it. I had good memories of the game, when I wasn't actually playing it, IE sightseeing and decorating my house. That was the other thing that I really liked, player housing. More MMO's need player housing.
I tired my hand at the game again a few years later when they basically restructured the entire game from the ground up without making it a new game, and introduced Jedi as a starting class. The game was still the same POS game that I had played all those years ago, so after my 30 free days, I walked away for good. Now in the months past, as well as to come, we are finding new information daily about a new game, one that will stay true and faithful to the Star Wars universe. Granted we will not be graced by such characters as Darth Vader and Leia, but the trade off is fair in my eyes. I really like what Bioware did with the KoToR universe and the character's in it, and think that this setting is a great one to work with. And while there is four "Force" based classes in the game, I still would rather play a Smuggler or Bounty Hunter as well because they look just as fun as the rest. The game looks GOOD. Finally.
With the advent of The Old Republic almost ready to enter its beta stages, and which I am sure most of you will be happy to know, I had quit WoW, again. This time is probably for good. Maybe Cataclysm might spark some intrest again, but I doubt it. I'm moving on WoW, there are plenty of fish in the sea for you. Anyway I have deleted my WoW specific blog, and and now switching focus of set blog to The Old Republic. Right now since the game isn't out, it will mostly feature news and other information about the upcoming game so look for that in the near future!
May the Force be with you,
- Nerdsbeware out
