-This is Phobotech!-
I've done animatics for Cyanide & Happiness, Purgatony, and WWE Storytime! I'm also a voice actor that's performed roles in One Piece, Gundam: Witch from Mercury, & Smite!
Check out my sci-fi novel, Umbra's Legion on Amazon Kindle!
Age 37, Male
Voice Actor/Animator
Collin College
Denver, CO
Joined on 9/22/03
i personally dont play any mmo's due to the fact its time consuming and it's like a cybernetic drug, the addiction will kill not only health but social life.
i'd rather play a game that lasts 8-10 hours of gameplay, unless it's planetside.
it's no fun to play a game that never ends, it just becomes repetitive and uninteresting.
That's certainly how it's beginning to feel. The primary quests seem distant, and the side quests abundant so numerous, it's almost pointless and futile to try and tackle them all.
Additionally, there's no skill involved. No great amount of thought is put into this, and that's not very stimulating to me in that aspect. System Shock 2 was story driven, and it took a bit of thought as to what skills you committed yourself into, what path you chose. Deus Ex was the same way. Strategy games are a no-brainer that they are a full-brainer. Even Battlefield 2 and 3 requires coordination with your team, and skill as to how you aim and how you shoot....what are you accomplishing by grinding and grinding away at an MMO...to join the legions of other anti-social nerds that have done the same numerous times before you?
Like Yahtzee pointed out in his EVE Online review, it's like paying for a second job. Fuck that...lmao
I love Star Wars.
Me too. Which is why I was slightly disappointed with SWTOR.
While this might not sound like a diplomatic statement, rest assured I completely understand where you're coming from: You expect an online game world that hosts thousands of other players to its content, to have similar world progression as a single-player game.
I started feeling this way around the time World of Warcraft's expansion, Burning Crusade, came out. I hadn't played many mmos before then, atleast not as seriously, and so the "go talk to this npc," "go kill 10 Y creature," and "go loot 15 Z landscape item" quests weren't as much of a drag as they would've been to mmo veterans.
At some point I began to feel like I was just doing the same thing for the same type of npc, for the same type of reason. Someone has a problem, the answer to that problem is a sword or a fireball or some variant, and you get some coin and food, or a piece of clothing as a reward. Fairly simple.
Thing is, while the game type is all about leveling up and progressing and getting stronger, you're only really getting stronger to face stronger opponents; which is to say that you're not actually getting stronger at all. You're just meeting any new area's minimal level of statistical adequacy for its content to feel at least mildly challenging.
This illusion of increasing power along with the idea that you're helping out npcs who show their distress by casually standing there with a bland expression on their face is something that calls to people who have nothing better to do, but repulses gamers who are used to a more dynamic response from their comrades and/or environment.
Lord of the Rings Online remedied this by introducing "Dynamic Layering," which instances game regions based on the content that is complete. This was also seen in World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King's Death Knight training grounds, where completing quests dynamically affected the world around you atleast in that zone.
The problem with the MMO genre is that regardless of what visual results you expect from your errand-running, someone else is going to have to experience that content for themselves, too. If an npc receives help, and that's the end of it, the paying customer doesn't get to experience that content. It's "unfair."
Some technological measures have been taken ("Dynamic Layering") but until this becomes widespread and applied to all facets of an MMO gaming world, it will remain static.
The genre as a whole is bland, and it's teaching game developers that they can have a lazy, easy game with flights of stairs simulating progression, and bank a fuckton off of it.
I want a new X-Wing vs TIE-Fighter, dammit.
I was considering paying for this game, but I do believe you've just swayed me in the opposite direction.
It's kind of a shame, I love Star Wars and Bioware is not really known for lackluster games.
Wreil
"But I'm convinced that MMO's are for fools who have nothing better to do and nothing better to buy or invest into....or rather, not for me. This isn't what I need to be doing with my time"
Dude, if you say that then you really are the wrong person to review this game...
In this case, you should have placed yourself in other peoples perspectives when reviewing, IF thats how you really feel about MMO.
Galneda
That doesn't discredit my perspective. I gave it a shot, and for a moment, certain actions were fun...but they quickly grew stale from their repetiveness. The blatancy that it's all constructed to take a simple action or moment and stretch it out, almost annoyingly time-consuming for a simple task. I gave it an honest shot, and this is my true perspective on it. I'm not the wrong person to review the game, because my love for Star Wars outweighs my disgust for WoW.
IF thats how you really feel about my review, than you should move along. Move along...