Interesting ToR early observation of players

[alikyu]

I have played both sides, and I find it incredibly funny when the opinion of Republic general chat is that Sith is more popular because of Horde and all the kiddies want to be dark. And when I am playing on the Empire side, the general opinion of their general chat is that Republic is more popular because of the movies and all the kiddies want to be hero light jedi.

This leads me to believe that the only thing I can say for sure is that both sides are equally retarded. The other side is full of kiddies because of this or that. This side is where all the mature adults play. Us vs them.

It's as if people can't have logical or justifiable reasons to play on the opposing faction.

As for PvP, it's primarily luck based. You may get people who know what they're doing. You may be facing a group of L50s that know what they're doing. Unless you are in a good group with a good amount of expertise gear, it's up in the air if you get an advantageous match-up or not. Some people may have a good win ratio as a level 10. Others may have an awful ratio all their leveling career. It isn't 100% luck, but whether you are doing well or poorly isn't 100% skill either.

The generalizations need to stop!

Oh, and as for me? I prefer the Empire side because of their stories and their voice-acting.

I don't mind female Jedi Sage and male Trooper/Varic from Dragon Age 2, but they aren't amazing either. I was fully wanting to love female Trooper/female Shepherd from ME2, but she did a poor job. It sounds as if she has a stick up her butt.

The voice for the Imperial Agent/female Hawke from Dragon Age 2 is amazing. I believe the IA has the best voice of all the characters. Female Sith Warrior and female Bounty Hunter aren't bad either.

[Cirque]

I play the Empire simply because I often like darker or more grim 'sides', and in WoW never really got to play any serious characters on Horde because everyone I know and care about play Alliance. This time however I put my foot down and everyone's Sith, it's been really great and even those who thought they never could play evil factions are enjoying themselves.

That said, the Empire isn't all that evil, and the Republic isn't all that good. That's what I've actually enjoyed the most about playing Empire: the nuances that get introduced, even if it's just in passing (and sometimes a bit less in passing, such as when romancing Ashara as an inquisitor), about their morals. When I tried a Jedi I quickly found that these nuances can be found on that side too, though I haven't gotten far yet, the one prominent example that comes back to mind is betraying the loving couple at the Jedi Knight staring area - since love is a bad thing, according to Jedi. Yet, as Ashara on Empire side concludes: 'something so beautiful can't possibly be wrong'.

I'm rambling. Long story short, that's what I find cool: find the evil in the good side, and the good in the evil side.

[ravenmoon]

Forbidden fruit syndrome. Simple as it is.

In real life you MUST obey the rules, live within the system, face the consequences of your actions.. overall behave good. So when you have an option to do completely opposite, amoral, destructive, be your own master who walks, do, says as he pleases and destroy all that dare to limit them... wouldn't you reject that?

We are tired being good all the time. We all want to be Darth Vader/Palpatine for some time. That's why villains are so admired and liked. Because they are *free* and not limited as we or the Light Side of the Force with all the rules and "don't do this, don't do that, it's forbidden to..."

yet to anyone who's really experienced the harsh realities such a way of life (Empire) inflicts on it's society, such an option is really put in perspective. NEver lived under an oppressive regime, or in a state with constant power struggles and coup'de'tars civil uprsiing and wars, where the only guarantee is an early grave or to go out and stab anyone before you get stabbed as your only real means of survival, a state that does uphold justice and peace and people are actually good or have that "good" perspective is entirely appealing. A tortured existence that has produced hatred and seething rage from suffering - rage you can identify with through frustration over things like social injustice and un-employment, lack, and the feeling of powerlessness you ahve about not being able to do anything about it. That's where the similarities end though, rage is rage, however reasons for it can be totally different in real life and a major factor in determining your side good or evil. This is somewhat different for the Jedi and Sith which we must remember are not like the other members of the Empire/Republic. Jedi don't even allow righteous anger, there is no emotion remmber, whilee it is not the Sith way to show any compassion even when it is warranted.

Is the motivating drive to play Sith Empire part of the "Spoilt rich westerner syndrome" perhaps? I do wonder if the many victirms in war torn countries had opportunities to play games like this what they would pick? perhaps the realitis of the portrayed dark side are lost on most of its audience who, like you say, only play to get a taste of the forbidden fruit and live out a side of them that they feel they cannot at all.

My reality however is different. In my life I feel I am free to make the choices I make, I'm not an upstanding citizen and law abider because of the police and 101 thousand regulations that would sthrow me in jail if ido not coorperate, I am because I believe in those principles and not because I think I believe in them. I'm no green scrub that has been fed the liturgy and not had some trials in life to test this stance, i am all too aware what the general masses of people in these so called "civilized" socieites do when the social and norm is disrutped, be it by war or by naturall disaster.. they behave according to their true nature.

The forbidden fruit appeals to people who are that way at heart in the inside of them, and only the restraining arm of the socieites law is keeping them at abay, take New Orleans when the Hurricane struck last decade or Sarajevo/Kossovo during the 90s Balkans wars, in both instances, so called civilized people were out and about looting and raping.. and in the case of Sarajevo/Kossovo, this wan't just the military. It was civillians.

The sith empire is a work of fiction, it is unfair to make serious comparisons to real life, same with the Jedi order who's philsophy simply falls apart in reality.."there is no passion? " - both are unrelaisitc, however what is real is the lure of this so called freedom or free to "act evil" players find in the empire that they feel they don't have in the republic, you're free to act good as well whatever your cultural norm is, but question is; Are you playing the faction you are playing as a statement of rebellion against the norm of your society? Or because these are the ideals you generally hold to?

a player like me plays both factions because i want to see the story from both sides, however I lean a lot closer to the Jedi than the Sith, at least in action anyways.

[Rooflesstoofless]

I really don't think WoW has as much of an influence as you'd like to think. I'm not a SW fan, but have many, many friends who are and the books/comics/etc are a far bigger drawn for being Imp than anything WoW related.

[Deleted]

i really doubt it has that much to do with wow as you make it seem. there are lots of star wars games, lots of books where sith lore is looked into more detail. and its quite compelling lore. and the thought of being a bad ass with a red light saber is enough on its own.

---------- Post added 2012-01-09 at 11:26 AM ----------



i rolled republic, have not had to ignore a single person so far. all mature and polite, and someone always answers a persons question in general about quests, items, professions etc.

Same mate - I've rolled alliance and I've had no trouble at all - not a single ignore so far. The general standard of maturity *seems* pretty good. I've seen a few smacktards in public but nothing serious yet

[ravenmoon]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Why? To summarize the end effect when my WoW guild "experimented" with doing some Horde alts "Ah, let's stop this, I cannot stand
the looks of this green thing anymore" as one guildmate put it (we managed to reach Level 10 on the Horde alts before stopping it...).

This is in no way objective. It depends on the people. Myselves I was never interested in Horde. I just don't like monster-like characters.

About Empire vs. Republic? I think a lot of it (though surely not all) has to do with "being able to throw lightning bolts". Also people who played
Mages/Warlocks in WoW might be more about playing a Sith Inquisitor than a Jedi Consular. Might sound a bit weird, but with WoW-friends of mine who wanted to play Empire (I am playing Republic) THIS was the reason why they absolutely wanted to play Empire. I also think some people prefer playing
the "good guy in an evil empire who is not strict in his personal rules" to the "good guy who is very strict in his opinions". People preferring Chotic Good
to Lawful Good, to put it into D&D Terms. And there's of course the ones who like to play the bad guy, the Chaotic Evil or whatever.



Looking more cool? Sorry. No. Could not stand the looks of ANY of classic Horde races.

indeed, what is true is the motivations do certaily vary on the whole. wow was not story driven, it rarely gave context without an extensive background exploration of lore to gain such context. Therefore players in most cases weren't ever picking sides based on principle. Nor on the character of the race or faction in question. Most who did on that basis would have probably played WC3 or earlier games which did a much better job at telling a story and therefore had the background to make a choice based on that.

most wow players have only played wow of the warcraft family of games, or played wow first, and wow has no story or barely has one, therefore choices of horde and alliance must look to other criteria, and there are many. Some are as you say, you like green skins and monsters? or not? others look past the tusks and horns and skin colour - fierce? peaceful? strong !! scary!! and go based on vibe. Others it's the little character emotes and behaviour of the race when the quests are undertaken or the animations. Some moves do look cooler than others, you will like some more than others.

Generally a lot of poeple play based on where there friends are, and the choices are made by those who care about such things. Care about high damage and feeling powerful, the horde provides more, that is the designers way of getting you to play them, or whatever motivation the designers have. It is clear the alliance races are supposedly "prettier" in looks, because in warcraft the alliance are the humans and their look alikes. That is more the defining strand, as opposed to Empire/Republic where it is light side/dark side of the force if you're a force user and morally good/ not so morally good if you're a non-force user or citizen - and ToR does play aout the character theme becuase it DOES tell a story. [not surprised peeps were pissed of when Elves went horde cos it changeed the once clear cut distinction of what was horde and what was alliance and as compared to WC3, lost their identity, cataclysm and mist rebuiding it or attempting to, classic case of game driven rather than story driven contentr - or rather social driven]

Interestingly enough, I notice most Greek, Turkish, Polish players play alliance whiles most English, French, German play horde. In the US, most city dwellers play horde, in my experience whiles rural alliance, altho there is a horde skew. Altho horde and alliance don't currently have a good /evil alignemnt, they did , and a bit of it has returned in the only piece of story warcraft finally has introduced in the cataclysm. We see the horde character more clearly. They are perceived as badass, while alliance perceived as lame in general, - maybe i'm saying this cos i'm a horde player. and this is how many of us perceive it and why we play horde and why we are the majority in wow. [even though i play alliance nearly as much - seriously my alliance and hord e toons are all roughly around 388 ilvl gear].

So it isn't surprising that players took that same pre-disposition into ToR and went Empire. A comment my friend made when i took a break from levelling my Sith to do a JEdi..what's it with you and the good side types?. And i remember for the first year of wow he wouldn't touch the horde. now he loves the horde. why? Horde were just more cool, had something very different to offer, cooler animations, emotes, players, racials - and yes he looked past skin colour and facial features.

Sith though, you are spot on, Lightning bolt is cool and a good reason why som e play inquistor. and yes there are people who alove playing the evil son of a bitch, there always have been, and continue to, yes they would never player alliance nor republic altho in ToR you can play an evil republican or a good Imperial while s in wow you cna't really play an evil alliance, although you can play a good horde.

[Deleted]

As far as I'm concerned the reason I rolled Empire was mostly due to spell animations of jedi's/sith. While Siths use lightning (spells effects are quite spectacular and impressive) Jedis are channeling a kind of small pebble rain (which I find terrible) and throwing random crap at their opponents (the idea isn't wrong, but the resulting animation is poor).

[Parrin]

I rolled Empire because of torwars.com. They have a guild on "Wound in the Force" server. But I'll be playing my second character as Empire because of the chance to get a jawa companion whose name could be mocking WoW.

[ravenmoon]

As far as I'm concerned the reason I rolled Empire was mostly due to spell animations of jedi's/sith. While Siths use lightning (spells effects are quite spectacular and impressive) Jedis are channeling a kind of small pebble rain (which I find terrible) and throwing random crap at their opponents (the idea isn't wrong, but the resulting animation is poor).

lol.. pebble rain.. actually that is the only thing i don't like about the consualr's spell effect, it needs more work i agree, the other stuff does look cool, not quite as cool as the inquistor true, but very very nearly imo.

but for the lightsaber meleers, i think the JEdis move a bit cool than the Sith, more acrobatic/fancy but the Sith is quite cool as well, the animation fits the the theme, the vengeful vicious slash actually looks it.

it's one of the things i love about ToR melee, every ability has an animation for it self, and they took the time to make empire and republic classes depsite being the smae thing have compeltley different animations. In wow i always leaned more towards the spell casters becuase they looked cooler, all wow meleers have the same animation , yes its different for each race, but there only 2-3 animations for everything (yes i know it adds up when you factor in that its race and gender that dothings differently in addition to weapon type) for me, despit that yes the female and the male had a different animation and orc was different from troll, it was rather boring, not so for ToR though, and i'm loving the melee action alot.

[papajohn4]

i think its the reverse syndrome from wow.. tons of people jumped on alliance at the start of wow and a lot of servers had major imbalanced populations. then the hype about all the adults and kewl players went over to horde that went on for a while.. i think that a lot of the people tried to be the "kewl" kids this time and we wound up with everyone playing the EMPIRE.

this basically..

[manybadgers]

I went empire because of the voices; the female sith warrior, female inquisitor, and female agent voices are all amazing. I'm trying to play a consular but there's too many people hating on my dark side choices and my red lightsaber

[glowpipe]

i find this fact kinda funny

Currently horde/alliance are becoming mirrors of each other, and they very often work together, something Empire and Republic never do.

Minor spoiler-ish

As i was reading this thread. I was fighting a sith lord on my sith warrior. With the help of some republic soldiers i made a deal with in a earlier quest.

Just had to put that out there

[Deleted]

When you look at the alliance races, night elves seem so lame, not cool

Although I agree with many things you say, I can't agree with this. Night elves are the only ones that truly have some culture showing outside the Alliance culture so to say. I mean just think, when you think of an Alliance outpost with dwarves, humans and gnomes in it... they all look the same, some walls, some towers, maybe some bunkers, some tents... and that's it, you don't even know for sure whose part is whose. Worgen and draenei have not been integrated either, however you don't see any towns outside their starting zones that make you actually like them.

So overall, night elves are the only ones whose culture is still seen, for in all the towns where they are dominant, all the buildings, artstyle etc look different from rest of Alliance.

That said, I agree that both in SW:ToR and in RIFT, thanks to the fact that WoW promoted the Horde side, everyone flocked to the "evil" side because it's "cool" and that's where all the mature and cool people are, or so they belive... which made both the Defiants and the Empire... rich with immature people actually and made the other sides more mature. Funny how things work, isn't it?

[Suggs]

I have played both sides, and I find it incredibly funny when the opinion of Republic general chat is that Sith is more popular because of Horde and all the kiddies want to be dark. And when I am playing on the Empire side, the general opinion of their general chat is that Republic is more popular because of the movies and all the kiddies want to be hero light jedi.

This leads me to believe that the only thing I can say for sure is that both sides are equally retarded. The other side is full of kiddies because of this or that. This side is where all the mature adults play. Us vs them.

Stop talking shit....ive been hammering this game on both sides and ive never seen 1 comment or conversation about what type of people play which side and on multiple servers where ive started chars to be with various mates. Nothing worse than people making up shit trying to look good especially on these forums....

[Deleted]

My buddies who have never played any mmo ever 3 of them wanted to role empire because they wanted to be badasses and be evil doers not "goody goodys",

They just want to run around clobbering everyone, none of them plan of playing past the free month though. Damn disposable income.

[Vehemence]

The Empire is dominant in almost every sever

Long live the republic!

[ravenmoon]

I went empire because of the voices; the female sith warrior, female inquisitor, and female agent voices are all amazing. I'm trying to play a consular but there's too many people hating on my dark side choices and my red lightsaber

i find it kinda amazing taht htey do, whichis good, shows that people are drawn into the immerson as far as the game is concerned. the lingering worry though is bcause the immersion is so good, will these further blurr the lines of distinction beteween rality and fantasy ? especially for younger players? how much real life behaviour would be influenced by characterisations from eithe rside? We have lived for along time wtih televisions influence on culture, this rather new phenoman is an engine for social change amongst our generation previously unheard off and warrants keeping an eye on.

never before can you have such level of immersion and interact with people, it will draw on a a new dynamic the study insocial behaviour with controlled stimuli is fascinating area of research, you could call the game environemnt a testing laboratory, however that would be simplistic as what you really want to know is how much will it influences people's lives outside the agame. that's wha t i want to know.

For the moment, i get no angst from choosing light side option as an Empire agent, but people do comment on my dark side choices on my Jedi, - and i like that my decision affecting how their story turns out. - but the game is designed cleverly as it only affectts the side stories, not their main one, and if your JEdi friends did pick the light side option they won't get the dark points despite the dark path beign available.

i also like how alth the dark side, where groups are concerned you don't do something truly evil, something happens that brings a not quite evil solution. The converse happens on the EMpire side, you jay have chosen to do good, but it still ends up tragic

[Deleted]

The Empire is dominant in almost every sever

Long live the republic!

Just like in the movies, the few against the many! Small groups of rebels versus the vast Imperial Warmachine!

For the Republic!

[Yriel]

You play through both horde and alliance, the horde feels more cool , has a more powerful story, and looks more cool. In ToR... it is a lot more balanced.

You know, it´s funny. On Taris, for example, the republic goes there first and tries to make the planet better. The empire player arrives there (story-wise) after the republic player and undoes a lot of the good things the republic did.
In WoW there is something like that in Ashenvale and there are 1 million whine threads out there complaining that this shows its the horde story yada yada yada.
And yet in TOR the people somehow are ok with that and say both sides are on equal footing. Why is that ?

[ravenmoon]

Although I agree with many things you say, I can't agree with this. Night elves are the only ones that truly have some culture showing outside the Alliance culture so to say. I mean just think, when you think of an Alliance outpost with dwarves, humans and gnomes in it... they all look the same, some walls, some towers, maybe some bunkers, some tents... and that's it, you don't even know for sure whose part is whose. Worgen and draenei have not been integrated either, however you don't see any towns outside their starting zones that make you actually like them.

You mis-understand me, i'm not criticising Night elves in the Warcraft universe, i'm criticisng their portrayal in wow. Night elves are aweseome, at least they were in WC3, they are just lame in world of warcraft, htey ahve d been like so many alliance races/stories developed poorlly, written badly and oozing lameness and not coolness, certainly not the impression we had in WC3. It botheered me cos of the rich background, culture an dlore they had started given that race, and i liked the contrast that seemed almost Jedi like. however in wow, night elves have lost every cool they have, they are wrritten exactly as most wow players perceive them and play them. All the bad players that play night elf male warriorrs and are 1-shotted in battlegrounds, adn the lame waver like a leaf battle ready aniamtion they have not to mention how they hold energy balls between their heads as they cast and you wonder how their heads havne't exploded yet - you see, i would hve chalked it down to players just failing at playing the race properly combined with handful of bad aniamtions that either tried to hard to make them look coool and ended up making them look lame (the walk for example of the nelf male that was supposed to be aunter but looks more like he's got something up his bum) or tried to make them a bit quirky /anitquated in somethings but just ended up failing. either way they failed to get coolness across, and if the intention was to make the horde races animate more cool, they succeeded. The sad thing is that when they actually wrote a story in now in cataclysm (cos therew as no story really prior to that) we now see the night elves really really lame. AS a horde character, you easily out wit them, out maneouver them militarily, outsmart them. you seem more of amaster in tehir own forest than they do, and they seem laugably pathetic.. i mean you can be beaten if that is the how the story goes but still be badass about it, but no, that is not how they were written, they barely survive etc.. and altho they do win, you are left compeltely confused as to how because they seemed clearly the weaker by far side. And you see no strength in character or resolve let alone martail prowress or skill


No it's not the night elves i think are lame in the creation, it's the portrayl in world of warcraft and warcraft cataclysm that is

i find this fact kinda funny

Currently horde/alliance are becoming mirrors of each other, and they very often work together, something Empire and Republic never do.

Minor spoiler-ish

As i was reading this thread. I was fighting a sith lord on my sith warrior. With the help of some republic soldiers i made a deal with in a earlier quest.

Just had to put that out there

ah but in ToR these adds real flavor and believable complxity in a good way, whereas in WoW similar things their lore team has tried have come off rather cheesy, unbleievable as if they were only done for the motivation of fixing some game mechanic or imbalance. Much better sotry writiers that have done the stuff for ToR than WoW atm. Don't get me wrong, WC3 was good, and story wise in a different league to the stuff they've dished out throughout wow's life, ToR is also on a much better league. WAtch the Clone Wars... much much better too.