When we left off a couple of weeks ago, I had just arrived with my baby Inquisitor Sorcerer on the planet of Dromund Kaas. The planet of milk and honey and giant frigging predators right outside the official Imperial Space Port.I think that the Sith Empire is taking this “let the weak perish” thing a bit too far, when you want to make even visiting your capital city an exercise in Darwinian jungle laws. Maybe all Sith lords are just complete adrenaline junkies that enjoy the rush of knowing that at any moment you take more than 5 steps outside the city walls there’s a good chance that something is going to try to shoot, bite or stab you in the face and neck area.

Also you would imagine that the capital planet of the Empire would have enough soldiers stationed to not have to rely on random passing strangers to keep the wheels turning.No really guys, I appreciate the chance to save the capital city of the Sith Empire from being destroyed by lightning storms, but you would imagine this is the kind of task that you maybe would not want to entrust to some fairly unproven “just-off-the-shuttle” hotshot that’s barely learned which way of the lightsaber you point away from your face (admittedly, that’s a mistake you normally only make once).

Anyways, after having saved the day I was able to make my way to the originally named Kaas City (Earth City, anyone?), which appeared to be suffering from some sort of outbreak that kept 90% of the population indoors.At least that’s what I must assume was happening, because I was jogging down huge roads and over large squares that were all but completely empty. For something that is supposed to be the hub of the entire Sith Empire it sure is deserted.Perhaps the citizens had stepped outside the city walls for a quick smoke and were promptly eaten/shot/stabbed/struck by lightning. Helps to keep congestion down, I guess.

Dromund Kaas offered me more chances to venture into yet more ancient Sith tombs. At this point I was starting to suffer from tomb raiding fatigue, or as we call it in the business: “Croft-Syndrome”.Really, if you’ve seen one old Sith tomb then you’ve seen them all, but as my master had previously demonstrated a penchant for frying people with Force lightning, I figured that I didn’t really have much say in the matter.
Eventually tombs were raided, schemes were carried out and my master was all round happy with my performance, to the point that she gave me my very own starship (honestly I would have been happy with a fruit basket, but thanks!).

By the way, let me just say that the moment you get your ship is wicked cool and it fills you with an appropriate kiddie level of “oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!” when you first step into the space dock and see it sitting there.

Continued…

I’ve been playing Star Wars: The Old Republic for a couple of weeks now, frying foes with Force lightning, splashing space ships with missiles, chatting up companions and generally having a good old time in a galaxy far far away (not that it really narrows it down much. How many galaxies are *not* “far far away”, after all?).

I thought I’d spend some time sharing my experiences and impressions in SWTOR here on MMOCrunch, and so I give to you the “Sith Journals”, my personal gaming diary/ongoing SWTOR review/personal ranting space that I will subjecting you all to. I’ll try to steer clear of major story spoilers, but there will be some spoiling of story going on, so if you absolutely do not want any part of the SWTOR story revealed to you, just punch yourself hard in the temple whenever you come across a spoiler, and the mild concussion should wipe your short term memory and ensure maximum Old Republic story enjoyment.

I’m not sure how long this journal experiment will run, but it will probably go on until:

1. I feel it has run its course and there’s nothing more interesting to write
2. I get tired of SWTOR and quit the game
3. Mind controlling aliens invade Earth and I am forced to give up my quiet life of supply chain management and computer games writer in order to form a xeno worshipping cult that appeases our tentacle-faced overlords through the means of ritual dancing and human sacrifice.

I have been spending almost all of my time in SWTOR playing my Sith Inquisitor, which I’ve so far gotten up to level 35. So come along with me and let’s jump back two weeks in time and join me as I first stepped out onto the hot sands of Korriban, just another slave with the simple hope of a better life and a chance to melt the faces of people with scorching Force lightning.

After a warm welcome from my friendly trainer, who apparently wanted nothing more than to see us ground up into Bantha fodder, I set about with my various tasks on Korriban, most of which involved venturing through old tombs and recovering some priceless artifact or other.

Considering that the Sith have been present on Korriban for many years, and considering the number of initiates that have been sent through those tombs to kill the undesirable inhabitants and loot anything of worth, I must say that I am quite surprised that they are apparently still full of monsters and archeological wonders.

Much can be said about the Sith, but their skills at retrieving artifacts from right outside their doorstep, and keeping said doorstep free from things that want to shoot them in the face, leave much to be desired.

Continued…

With the release of The Old Republic rapidly approaching, I’ve seen many examples of old MMO discussions popping up all over various gaming forums. It’s the argument about how you cannot compare a completely new MMO (In this case SWTOR) to a long running and established MMO (In this, and most cases frankly, World of Warcraft).

The latest example I saw was on a big gaming site forum where a user was stating that the “looking for group” (LFG) solution that SWTOR currently has is very bare bones when you compare it to WoW. While WoW streamlines the process of finding groups to an extreme degree (too extreme for the tastes of some players even), the SWTOR tools for finding groups are much more basic, largely consisting of providing you with a chat channel and ticking off a flag that indicates to anyone looking at the zone population list that you want to group.

It did not take long before people started angrily complaining that the thread author was being completely unfair in comparing SWTOR with WoW. Their argument was that obviously WoW has been out for 7 years now and would have a lot more features than anything you could expect from a game that was just about to launch. The SWTOR defenders did not argue that the way that SWTOR handle grouping currently was in any way a better solution than what WoW does, simply that it was okay for BioWare to release SWTOR with a sub-optimal LFG tool set and then eventually patch in a more fully featured version at a later stage.

There are many variations of the above argument, with different features being called out and different new MMO’s being compared to established ones. But the basic premise of them all are that it is unfair for players to compare one MMO product to another, if one of the products has been around for a long time.

It’s an argument that is bizarre to me. When SWTOR comes out it is going to be competing against WoW in its current state, not what WoW was like 3, 5 or 7 years ago. It’s going to be a full price MMO, so to a consumer they will be able to buy and subscribe to either WoW or SWTOR for around the same price. Does it really make any kind of sense to turn a blind eye to the issues of a game simply because it is new, if it’s offering an inferior experience to an existing and comparatively priced product?

If you try to apply that logic to another product it’s clear that it doesn’t make much sense. Let’s say that a new car company just launched its first car. They decided to price the car at around the same level as a large BMW. But their car didn’t have ABS, no power steering, no climate control and the front passenger door would occasionally fall off if you turned too hard into a corner. Obviously no sane customers would pay for this car. No consumers would say “ah, well they don’t have all the decades of experience with building cars that BMW do. I’m sure they’ll eventually figure out how to make sure their doors don’t fall off”.

It seems to me that this kind of argument is all too often used by people that are already so emotionally invested in a new or upcoming game that they feel the need to defend “their” game by any means. Even if its by using logic that is so poorly thought out that even a Scientologist would shake their head and go “now that is just dumb”.

There is one important point that I want to make, though. While I think it is completely fair that players compare MMO’s regardless of their age, I am *not* saying that all MMO’s necessarily need to match each others feature set 1:1.

When WoW came out it could not match the most popular western MMO of the time, Everquest, in every way. Everquest was a big established MMO with several expansion packs under its wings and many years of polish. But WoW managed to offer an experience that was different and compelling enough that it didn’t matter that Everquest had some features that WoW did not. The overall experience of playing WoW was simply more enjoyable than playing Everquest, despite this disparity of content and features.

Likewise it is entirely possible that SWTOR will not need to have as streamlined a LFG tool as WoW does to match or even beat the success of WoW. Perhaps the deep stories will mean more to players. Or perhaps players will be overjoyed by the companion system. The point is that an MMO can still beat out another MMO even if it is missing some features. In the end it is all about the overall experience for the players.

I just wish that people would stop trying to “protect” new MMO’s from criticism by saying it’s “unfair” to compare them to MMO’s that have had years of post launch updates. At the end of the day players will play whatever game that presents the most fun experience to them and no one is going to care if the game came out in 2011, 2009 or 2004.

A new developer update for the month of November is now up for the barbarian-em up Age of Conan.

The developers lay out the road map for the next series of updates to the game, covering planned additions as far out as Q2 2012.

First up is the 3.1 update, which is currently being rolled out on the servers. This is mostly a tech update that is not adding new content.

There’s more juiciness in the planned 3.2 update, which will bring the new dungeon “House of Crom”, which Funcom promises will be “one of the most spectacular and atmospheric indoor locations we have added to the game yet”. Besides this new dungeon, update 3.2 will also see the addition of a new raid, the Jade Citadel, where players will fight to nab some nice loot from the Khitan Emperor himself.

Update 3.3 is going to conclude the Khitan raid encounter that 3.2 began, with a new raid instance and two new raid encounters.

3.3 will also bring some new things to the blood smeared PvP table. It will be adding PvP world bosses and a chance to get some new PvP mounts. Funcom is also talking about doing some changes to the PvP mechanics, which may include some significant changes to sprinting and stamina.

Update 3.4 is going to be mainly another tech update. It may also contain some changes to the siege systems as well as adding max level AA balanced versions of some existing dungeons.

Update 4.0 is the last point on the developer update. This is going to be the next adventure pack, which is going to take place in an as yet undisclosed location. Most likely this update will also feature a complete revamp of the trade skill system, which is going to be changed quite fundamentally and hopefully make trade skills more interesting and useful to players.

Update 3.1 is currently being deployed to the servers. Funcom hopes that Update 3.2 can start pretty quickly after 3.1 has been implemented. Update 3.3 is planned for early 2012, probably around February. Update 3.4 is looking at a Q1 2012 release date and the big 4.0 update has a vague estimate of Q2 2012.

MMO’s can roughly be divided into two categories, those that strive to entertain the players and those that strive to let the players entertain themselves.

These two fundamentally different ways of thinking about game design have become more and more distinct in the MMO space over the last 5-10 years. Some players swear by the unconstrained freedom of MMO’s that leave it up to the players themselves to create the gameplay, while others thrive on the content stuffed MMO’s that take you on a more or less pre-planned journey from one end of a fantastic world to the other.

Let’s take a closer look at these two design choices and what it means for the players that play them.

Continued…

With the hype train for The Old Republic picking up speed, many people are asking if this is going to be the MMO that will finally topple World of Warcraft from its throne, where it has been comfortably sitting for 7 years. So many MMO’s have been declared to be “WoW killers” over the years, from Warhammer Online, Age of Conan, to newer offerings like Stark Trek Online and Rift. In a classic case of “The boy who cried wolf” we’ve become pretty numb by now to all the claims that game X is going to kill WoW.

But perhaps we should actually consider ToR’s potential for pushing the old and bloated king out of his seat.

I think that there are three factors that together makes for a very real chance of ToR becoming a big success of WoW proportions.

Continued…

Although initial suggestions from Funcom about an open beta for The Secret World before the holidays proved to be incorrect, Funcom has confirmed that an open beta will happen before the launch of the game in April 2012.

If you’re an obsessive type, like me, you’ll probably already have started to dive deep into the factions of The Secret World, trying to make up your mind as to whom you should throw your lot in with.

You can’t swing a pentagram in The Secret World without hitting a member of a secret society. Whether they’re mystical warrior philosophers, cold manipulating power mongers or aristocratic defenders of the old “proper” ways.

Personally, I’m all about the mongering of power, which is represented by the nefarious Illuminati faction, but both the Dragon and Templars have a lot going for them, and making a choice isn’t easy. But let’s take a closer look at them and you can make up your own mind!

Continued…