I was fairly psyched about
TOR and the possibilities of a Bioware MMORPG until I heard two things: "
phat lewts" and "stealth-based class that can kill Jedi with explosive drones". At that point, I went very quickly from "this could be epic cool" to "F@#% you."
The "phat lewt" comment came from one of TOR's dev team giving the press a run through a segment of the game. http://www.massively.com/2009/06/04/e3-2009-star-wars-the-old-republic-demonstration-part-2/
"How about phat lewts?" The developer asked. "I like MMOs, they give me phat lewts."
They loot the corpse of the Jedi, "As we all know, the only thing better than a lightsaber... is two lightsabers! Especially when one has just come off the corpse of a Jedi you've just punked."
Anyone who talks like this should be slapped vigorously and not let anywhere near a Star Wars MMO. Aside from an apparent lack of respect for the source material, it suggests an extremely simplistic view of what people want out of an MMO and an utter lack of appreciation for the strengths and weaknesses of the KOTOR line. "Lewt", in KOTOR, quite frankly, has always been the weakest portion of the game, full of vague references to distant ancestors of well-known Star Wars canon characters that never add up to much more than a few stat bonuses. If you can battle a Jedi and come out of the experience with nothing more than "Ooo! I punked him and stole his lightsaber!" You're
doing it wrong.
The existence of the Imperial Agent, the "stealth character who kills other characters with explosives before they get a chance to fight back"- and more specifically, the "stealth character ONE SIDE gets who kills others with explosives before they get a chance to fight back" brings back all my worst experiences with PvP in City of Heroes. There are people on the forums for that game who say, without a trace of awareness of how ridiculous it sounds, that if you just
hold down the jump key _all the time_ you're in a PvP zone, the Stalker class mostly won't be able to hit you. If you have a class that exists mostly to kill other player characters- who has a significant advantage in doing so- who makes other players have to play entirely differently
simply because of their existence, and their existence alone- And especially if that class exists on only one side, and has no apparent nemesis on the opposite-
you're doing it wrong.
I don't doubt
TOR will do fine. But courtesy of their own stupid PR, they're going to have to do it without me.
Don't be fooled, WoW doesn't have remotely 11mil in North America.
