Dear Mrs. Santa

Dear Mrs. Clause,

So River tells me you have some special goodies for me, all I have to do is ask. I've been reeaaallly good this year; but when I'm bad I'm better, just ask Sctrz. Some of this is pretty "World Peace" level stuff, IYKWIM, but some of it is doable. Much like you, if River is to be believed. ;)

1. Stop people from whinging over SWTOR. It is what it is. Enjoy it or GTFO.
2. I wants me some GW2, ASAP. I am so looking forward to the end of the unholy trinity, and trying some real online roleplaying.
3. Speaking of Roleplaying, are we ever going to get a Firefly MMO? I so wanna be Malcolm Reynolds. He's the big reason I plan to role a Gunslinging Smuggler in SWTOR. (I promise not to cross IPs, though.)
4. When is someone going to invent the Holodeck? We'd all be in better shape if we were actually jumping around killing imaginary dragons, instead of pushing buttons on a keyboard or gamepad.
5. As long as we're in pure fantasy territory, can you get me a (well-paying) job spewing my worthless opinion in the internet? My day-job is not fulfilling, though I am grateful for it.

Thanks in advance. I hear MMOGC, Stargrace, Scopique, and Syp might have some items on their lists, as well.

Sincerely,
Rowan

Gaming in Bed (Sometimes with Pants)

Yesterday Scarybooster posted the ultimate SWTOR-fan gaming accessories. That's a lot of crap for a lot of dough. In case anyone is curious, this is my gaming set-up:

Asus GG73Jh - It's not the ultimate gaming rig, I suppose, and Asus has put out the G74 now. But it handles everything I need it to on some fairly high settings. (I usually turn down ground-clutter and shadows.) And I love the fact that I can easily slip the battery in and out the back, without turning the laptop over.

Logitech M570 - I fell in love with trackball mice while deployed to a very dusty part of the world, playing RTS games like Rise of Nations. They make steering very easy in every MMO I've played, though it takes my friends a while to get used to before they are comfortable with it. There are gaming mice with more buttons out there for the fast twitch crowd. But I wouldn't trade my 570 for anything that didn't have a trackball for my thumb.

Yep that's it. I use earbuds sometimes, but gave up on other headsets. An operator-style earpiece/mic might be nice for vent.

I've thought about a left hand gaming device like Scopique's, but I'm not sure. I have the Zboard Fang (didn't pay that much for it) but never found it as useful as I thought I would. I hardly ever sit at a desk or table anymore when I game. It's either the bed or the couch, usually.

Criticism of MMOs

So there have been a lot of "arguments" on either side of the fence regarding whether SWTOR is worth playing or not. The funny thing is that much of the same evidence is portrayed as either positive or negative, revealing more about the writer than it does about the game. This happens with every newly released MMO and probably every single-player game as well.

One criticism is the lack of true aliens as Player Character choices. BioWare apparently said a few months ago they felt that an alien's story would be too different from the human centered stories they had developed. This is true. There is a ton of prejudice in the SW universe against even "near humans," much less other aliens. So their story would not be the same. However, as I recall, BioWare went a step further and said they didn't think people would be able to relate to an alien protagonist. I was thinking the other night that it had to do with audio dialogue more than graphics issues. As HarbingrZero pointed out, they have most of the aliens that people would want to play already modeled and rendered as NPCs. I do think it's short-sighted. Plenty of people have played some pretty bizarre creatures in other games. WoW has Space Goats, Walking Cows and Self-Willed Zombies, for cryin' out loud. Cryptic's STO is the king of aliens, thanks to their extremely customizable characters. After going through the various models in the creation screen during the SWTOR beta, I can pretty much guarantee most of my alts will be human or cyborg (which is human). The other options were kinda lame, IMHO. A Rodian or Trandoshan would have been cool.

The Legacy System has also come under fire. I have issues with it myself, but it won't stop me from playing the game or adapting to the Legacy System in my roleplaying.

A commenter named "gahgoots" on Scarybooster's SWTOR Beta Review/Impressions Part 1: The Bad left a well articulated comment regarding his impressions of the game after a few months of beta testing. Basically he said the replayability of the game is limited, it is too linear. There is not enough to do besides quest.

I understand the liner/nonlinear argument, both within a zone and through multiple zones. WoW gave several options for questing in different zones any any given level, but I often found I had to visit several zones just to level up to the next tier of questing, the next set of zones. Within each zone, there were places you didn't want to go when you first qualified to enter the zone, because you would get your ass handed to you.

Rift has a similar problem; there were several times that my bride and I had to go to another zone to quest because we had progressed in the story farther than we had progressed in levels. The quests became too difficult to complete without leveling up first. Also, Rift suffers from the one-time-through-for-each-faction issue. More so than SWTOR, I believe.

Gahgoots also said the mirrored classes meant that there are really only four classes to play. I disagree with this, because of the advanced classes. even if the ACs are mirrored (they are), that's still 8 classes after the intro planets. Some ACs may be very similar, Shadow (rogue) and Sage (mage/priest) have completely different roles and many different abilities. The same with goes for Sniper versus Operative: A long-range cover-loving killer as opposed to an in-your-face melee fighter or healer. WoW had only about that many classes to start, and didn't even bother to change their names or ability effects. STO only has three "branches."

The linearity can be enjoyable. I see the SWTOR story as a choose-your-own adventure. Many of the things that have been brought up are not problems to me. I am not an idiot, I am not lazy (well maybe a little), I prefer that a game be relaxing, not frustrating. I have enough stress at work, I don't want to come home to more stress. If you do, Dear Reader, maybe this game is not for you. I don't enjoy FPS games like Halo or CoD, or EA Sports games like Madden or NBA Elite, but I don't come on here and rant about how they suck.

I've played a few other MMOs, and they all have the same features/problems to some degree. The question is, is the journey enjoyable? Most people who will play Skyrim all the way through have already done so, and loved it. It's been less than a month since it came out. For the same price as Skyrim ($60), you can get the basic edition of SWTOR and play for a month. Of course, BioWare and EA would like you to keep playing and paying the monthly subscription. Play the game for as long as you enjoy it, then cancel your subscription. Easy as pie.

QOTD: SWTOR's Legacy System

The discussion is heating up over at BioBreak regarding SWTOR's Legacy System. Syp brings up some excellent points. For example:

Because surnames are unique on a server, it’s going to be a race to get to them first (and if you come late to the game?  Good luck!).

Warsyde commented on Syp's post:

Whether the name is reserved at character creation or reserved at level 20 (or whenever) doesn’t make much difference, either way it’s a race to get there first, the only difference is the length of the race. They need to make them non-unique.

I think the difference between someone beating you to a name at character creation and the same thing happening 30 levels later is significant. In the first case, you'd lost before you even started running. The second affects gameplay style and possibly enjoyment, if you feel you need to rush through the story to snag that name.

Scarybooster thinks BioWare should stop calling it a surname and just refer to it as a Legacy name:

Everybody can be Skywalker if they want. If you want to be original BW should make a check system that says, “Skywalker”- taken are you sure you want to proceed? Yes/no. “Skywalker” -Name has not been used on this server. Do you want to proceed, Yes/No

I like STO's approach to names and roleplaying. Along with @handles that only appear in chat (I don't count chat when thinking about immersion, it's part of the UI.), STO has "short names" and "full names" along with an in-game RP backstory section as part of the character window. This allowed me to roleplay Donovan Locke as Locke, a militaristic character, and Rowan Starblanket as Rowan, a much more informal character. It also meant that there could be many players with the same character name (Just like my meatspace name is hardly unique) because our @handles were unique. The printed mission dialogue sometimes used the designated surname and sometimes the short name, depending on the context of the conversation. It worked great, and made me feel part of the story.

Scary's suggestion that being original could be optional is great for the first user of the name, until there are two hundred other "Skywalkers" running around. Then they are not so unique. On the other hand, meatspace couples and families could share the surname as they play together. Of course, if it's not a surname, then the option to make it a surname should be removed. I agree the surnames should be either non-unique and/or not part of the Legacy system at all. We could still have the Legacy title and it wouldn't have to be a surname at all, could be an object (i.e., The Frostmourne Legacy, to borrow from WoW). Of course, now that I think about it, there's nothing stopping people from doing that now. Also, if I understand correctly, the players automatically enter the Legacy sytem and start earning Legacy points, regardless of whether they choose a Legacy name immediately or not. So no worries about missing out on whatever rewards are in store.

[EDIT]Another quote from Syp's comments, this time from Buhallin:

While I agree with the concerns over how Bioware implemented this, I’m continually amazed at the MMO community’s ability to take even the most minor things and turn it into an epic catastrophe if they don’t get exactly what they want.

In short, the Legacy system as currently explained is flawed, but I believe there are work-arounds. BioWare could maybe heed some of the suggestions, but people shouldn't sweat it so much. It's just a game . . .

Just the Two (Four) of Us: Observations and Suggestions for Duoing in SWTOR

So I (and everyone else and their brother) got in to the "stress test" beta of SWTOR this Thanksgiving weekend. Reams have been written about the quality of the game and the story. But I think most people have already made up their minds about whether they are going to play, and we bloggers are all simply preaching to our respective choirs. I want to talk a little about partnering up with a single fellow player, say a spouse, for long term duo play. Chris over at Levelcapped beat me to the punch on one aspect of grouping:

Playing with two people is great; playing with two people who each have a companion is awesome. It’s like a wrecking ball swinging through content. To some, that may sound like the End Of The World As We Know It, but as I’ve said before, I’m all about the progress and, in this case, the story.

So I intend to play at least one pair of characters with my lovely bride, Sctrz. (An Aside: I want to point out that, much like others have mentioned doing, I played classes I wasn't sure about or flat out had not intended to play when the game goes live: Trooper, Agent, Knight, Consular. Their stories have me completely hooked; I now want to find out what happens to each one.) Anyway, we both roled the Imperial Agent on Saturday and Sunday. Now grouping with others allows you to earn social points, which are somewhat like faction points, unlocking titles and gear that you would not otherwise have access to. If you have a Significant Other Leveling Contract (SLC), this aspect of the game becomes pure icing on the cake for characters under the SLC.

One of the newer (for beta) opportunities for partnered characters is the ability to spectate the NPC conversations for the your partner's stories. This is great if you are different classes and and don't care too much about spoilers; it gives the player whose story is being shown a bunch of "free" social points (normally distributed by roll on the conversation wheel). The problem with roling the same class is that you can only ever be a spectator in your partner's story, even if you are at the same point in the story. Then they have to watch you. This might be good for those who want to see how different conversation choices play out. You can split off into your own story rooms if you want, but then you lose those few social points because no one is with you.

During the non-story quests (Are they quests or missions? Even BioWare isn't sure.) you "compete" for responses to the NPCs and this can be amusing if one of you is playing Light Side and the other is playing Dark Side. Everyone gets Light/Dark credit for their choice, but the player who wins gets to slaughter or set free, much to the dismay of the other (usually Sctrz, in our case, since I often chose the Dark Side.)

Another issue with playing the same class for your SLC is that, at least initially, you end up with the same companions. They can be customized, but not to the point where they don't both look like the same character. This didn't cause confusion, but was odd. At higher levels with more companions to choose from, this would not be as big a deal.

One last issue: if you play the same class, you will be competing for armor rolls. Different classes, even those with the same level of armor (light/medium/heavy) will still be looking for different stats.

So on Sunday and Monday evenings, Sctrz and I decided to play Jedi. She roled a Knight and I roled Consular. (The picture is actually one I had taken on another prior consular. [EDIT: I just realized all the screenshots I took automagically appeared in a new folder in My Documents!] Meanwhile, if you have Google's Picasa downloaded and running, it will make pictures everytime you hit Print Screen.) This went a little better for a few reasons, some game related, some interpersonal. Because I have a well-above-average sense of spatial relationships and map reading ability (Yes, I've been tested. Go Army!), and because I have soloed my way through countless hours of WoW, STO, and other games, I have a tendency to make my own way through the game world and expect Sctrz to follow. She, in turn, often feels like I am still soloing and she is just tagging along. So I made a conscious effort to discuss with her the questing options, what to do next, etc. I did say to her at one point, "You decide where we will go, and then trust me to get us there." From my perspective, at least, this worked better and we had less friction. I invite her to comment and you, Dear Reader, can get her side of it.

Anyway, having the two different classes on the same starting planet meant that we saw both stories (for the most part). If you're not interested in spoilers for the other class, jump into the story area with your partner, so they can get the social points, and take a biobreak or you can help with fights and such, and ignore the "cutscenes."

We play next to each other, within easy earshot of the two computers, and the SWTOR conversations tended not to sync up for various reasons. This was distracting, so we each put one earbud in and then could hear each other without our computer sounds getting in the way. I'd kinda like stereo, and we could use headphones with Ventrilo I suppose, though that would be odd: sitting in the same room, but communicating over VOIP.

The two classes complemented each other very well, even though before level 10 and the Advanced Classes, basically every class in the game is DPS only. She would jump in, vibroblade swinging, and I would stand off just a bit, force-throwing objects at the target and only occasionally swinging my blade. As Chris said above, the content is not difficult to solo, but running through it with a partner is great. Once we got our companions, around level 7 or 8, it was even better.

When we hit level 10 and finished in the starting area, we headed to the space fleet to choose our Advanced Classes and crew skills. It only makes sense to pick complementary ACs when you're partnering with someone, so I went Sage and dumped points into healing, while Sctrz chose the dual-wielding Sentinel, figuring we could depend on our companions to tank. We accepted a quest to the first Republic Flashpoint, "The Esseles." We thought we'd try it even though there were only two of us, with our companions. I was gratified to see a notice pop up that recommended "2+" players for the flashpoint. We got all the way through to the last boss without any real problems, but just couldn't quite get him down. I would've liked to go back at level 12 to see if we could down him, we were that close at 11.

[EDIT, thanks to Chris] One last thing about duoing with different classes: Unless you choose classes that are on the same starting world, you will be at least level 10 before you can partner up on the second world. There isn't really anything for the Sith to do on Nal Hutta, for example. We are only talking about 1½ evenings of solid play at the very beginning, however, so take it for what it's worth.

So DL:TR version:

• Duoing with a partner/significant other is not only viable in SWTOR, but fun.
• I recommend choosing different classes, but this is not absolutely necessary.
• Even when you do choose different classes, it shouldn't be too difficult to stay close in XP, assuming you have an SLC.
• At least some of the Flashpoints are perfectly doable as a duo with companions, but you may want to be a level or two higher than if you were in a full group of four players.

This wall of words became quite expository, even though I strove not to spoil anything. Once again, I was thrilled with the opportunity to participate in the SWTOR beta, and look forward to playing solo and with my lovely bride when the game launches.