Excited about SW:TOR? Reasons for MMO's being successful?

[Solarshot]

Have recently begun thinking why I've become so excited of TOR and why I am waiting for this game to come out compared to others like guilds wars.
Which got me thinking about why I was also excited when I first got wow at the age of 12. At first I thought it was probably because I was 6 years younger and games were just seen as a larger part of my life when I had less things to do. But after considering it some more I've concluded that the entire WarCraft franchise that was created prior to WoW is what got me so interested in this game, namely WarCraft 3 which involved so many key events that affect WoW.

Anyways, this is how I've started to gauge the success of a mmorpg. I quit WoW a while ago simply because of a lost of interest, and I started up Rift. Enjoyed it, but if I didn't logon for a week, I didn't really miss it. The storyline and the lore behind it seems interesting to me, but I just don't think there's enough grab the interests of as many people that WoW has, along with how many people are going to be playing TOR.


Two questions I have, is whether you feel that an interesting background story for a mmorpg has a direct impact on the success on the game and without one the game is pretty much destined to not live up to it's very high expectations (most games want to "beat" WoW)?

The other being more off the topic I've written about, but for some reason when I first saw TOR I figured it would be weird how you could continuously hit someone with a lightsaber and they would still be 100% intact at the end (no missing arms/legs). Of course this is the same as a fight with a sword (no wounds/decapitation etc.) but for some reason I just can't get past the idea of light sabers not dismembering their foe. My understanding is that the movies is what got me into this mindset, since in every light saber battle someone loses a leg or an arm. Which has me wondering if anyone else had this mindset when they first saw a Star Wars game and agree that the movies is what has influenced your ideals towards jedi combat?

[llDemonll]

Swords won't dismember because fights would be near-instantaneous, something not common in anything but FPS'

[Karteli]

I remember reading something about dismemberment, but it is more of a finishing move than something during a fight. If you could disable your opponent in PVP by cutting off extremities, there would probably be a class imbalance to play Jedi's, lol.

[Trollsbane]

That is why Bushido Blade was one of the best fighting games ever. But it couldn't work in an MMO. =)

[noahjam326]

I 100% agree with your post. Basing an MMO on a franchise is a major major stepping stone. I think this stepping stone only helps with initial sales. Coming from a well-loved franchise is one of the things that made WoW as popular as it is. Blizzard even said it themselves in regards to SWTOR a few months back. They themselves stated that SWTOR has a good chance because it's based on Star Wars, just as Warcraft started. But this draw runs out after X time has passed.

[Deleted]

Force users 1 shotting everyone would not make for a fair MMO. Can you imagine raiding? "Oh no, a Krayt dragon!" *Throws lightsaber and cuts its head off*.

[Copasetik318]

In Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, you could be using a lightsaber and fighting a guy with a regular steal blade and it still be a fair fight.. it was weird at first but you get used to it. SW: KOTOR was awesome imo.

[Deleted]

In Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, you could be using a lightsaber and fighting a guy with a regular steal blade and it still be a fair fight.. it was weird at first but you get used to it. SW: KOTOR was awesome imo.

Cortosis weave, they explain that in the tutorial. Although cortosis is supposed to short out lightsabers.

[Arrowstormen]

While it probably helps, I had never heard about Warcraft 3 before WoW, and I have never played GW, but is excited for GW2.

But it does help other places.

[Carmakazie]

Cortosis weave, they explain that in the tutorial. Although cortosis is supposed to short out lightsabers.

from my understanding, most of the cortosis weave swords use a synthetic form of the mineral that just is capable of parrying a lightsaber blade. only the pure stuff can actually short out the blade

[yaij9841]

In Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, you could be using a lightsaber and fighting a guy with a regular steal blade and it still be a fair fight.. it was weird at first but you get used to it. SW: KOTOR was awesome imo.

There weren't really regular steel anything in Kotor. There seemed to be an abundant source of things around to stop lightsabers and other energy based weaponry. Didn't basic energy shields also effectively stop sabers to a point?

edit:

IMO an MMO is much better off using some sort of backstory when it begins. I look at games like Rift or Aion and compare them to WoW and Lotro based on the story almost as a reason to get into them. Almost bought lifetime Lotro sub because I loved the series back in the day. No decent backstory makes it hard to get sucked into the game, at leastr in my experience.

And while it would be interesting to be able to disable players/npc's in combat, I don't think we'll be seeing that in an MMO setting anytime soon. We'd need fighting copying Oblivion or something for that to be even remotely fair.

[Sunshine]

See the existing SWTOR main discussion thread.