TOR a WOW Clone? I don't care.

[sir.rutthed]

Two things:

1. Fuck that. Dragon Age 2 was a good game. The only reason it's so lowly regarded is because it's the worst game Bioware's made which I will freely admit. And it's still better than 80% of the games out there. That just goes to show how great Bioware are at what they do.

2. PVP was my thing in WOW. It's most of what I did. I played a Paladin and a Death Knight (yes I am a massochist, thank you for asking!) and in general I really enjoyed it. I can understand if you didn't like it, and it's true that FUCKING ROGUES were way OP when I was on, but it was still a lot of fun for me and my friends.

1. No, let's not fuck that. Dragon Age 2 was not a good game. It was the worst thing Bioware's ever made, yes. But it was not better than 80% of 'the games out there'. It is far inferior to its most direct counterpart, the Mass Effect series. Even ME2, which was the most damning symptom of the EA virus that has infected Bioware, was better than DA2. Mass Effect 2 was Mass Effect for shooter players. DA2 was WOW for people without a constant internet connection.

Compare DA2 to Neverwinter Nights. Again, another Bioware title, another fantasy RPG. This one is from 2002, also. Two Thousand fucking Two. We're coming up on the decade mark for how long this game's been out. When you asked NWN what a Fireball spell did, it told you it was a ranged AOE spell that did some d6's per caster level. Not 'it shoots a blast of fire and hurts some people sometimes unless it hurts them less than normal or they're immune or it didn't feel like getting hurt or something'.

Let's not forget that feeling of walking down a hallway, walking into a room (DA2 now) and suddenly, enemies! 4 of them! Oh no, actually it's about 20. There is just a cap of 4 at a time, and they come in waves. So you get into a rhythm; every X seconds, you can fireball again, and right after fireball comes ice blast or whatever the fuck.

Holy Shitburgers, Batman! That's exactly like WOW! Fucking EXACTLY like WOW!

Compare: NWN you had spells per day. Prepared beforehand if you were a divine caster or a Wizard, spells per day of each spell level if you were a sorcerer or bard. If you blow every spell you have the first time something looks at you funny, you better have a good backup plan. You had to think, and that's the most repugnant part of DA2. No matter what class you are, you just had your bag of tricks, and every time you pulled something out you'd get another one in a few seconds. You don't have to make judgments, you just hurr durr nova everything, wait ten seconds, and do it again. If you were an archer, you used your fancy special arrow abilities, then waited for them to come back. Then you did it again. No thought, just push the buttons that make things happen and wait five seconds to do it again.

So fuck your Dragon Age.


2. I ask you this: Did PVP mean anything? Did you get anything from it (character wise, this isn't a discussion on your emotional well being)? Did any of it matter? If you lose the fight, what did you lose?

Nothing. Depending on when, maybe you had to pay some of your gigantic cash hoard to 'fix your shit'. Nothing

I invite you to the world of EVE Online, where everything you do matters. Every ship you kill in PVP is a ship forever gone. It's materials that no longer exist. They have been destroyed. And if you and your friends kill enough of a guy and his friends, he will run out of shit to throw at you. Then you walk into his house, kick his sorry ass to the curb, and rearrange the artwork on the walls to your liking. You blew up his shit and took his home.
Shit matters.

1. I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on DA2 cuz that's a whole new can of worms I'd love to discuss in another forum or a private message, but really doesn't apply here. Honestly a lot of the issues you point out are purely semantic and have no impact whatsoever on gameplay. It's just a matter of whether you want a bunch of abstract and unwelcoming numbers (which I happen to like too) or a more simple and easier to understand description of the same damn thing. Sure DA2 sucks by Bioware standards, but the argument could be made that that's because all the good Bioware writers have been working on TOR for the last few years since it's the most ambitious project on their table right now.

2. Losing your shit forever makes sense in a lot of games, but when it comes to MMO's I just don't want that to be a factor. I've invested too much time and effort to have my guy killed off on a whim by another player and be forced to make a new character from scratch. Even in EVE Online you don't really lose anything if you save your money right since you can just buy another ship at least the first time or two. How would that work in Star Wars? Maybe clones could work for this since clones tend to have major issues in the long term in the expanded universe. Actually, I like that idea. Hey Bioware, can we get some clones up in this shit?

 

[SteewpidZombie]

WOW clone would be Runes Of Magic, which is basically the same game copy and pasted with some small tweaks here and there. Considering the the new Bioware game is Starwars and not WOW, and that it has voiced dialouge, different planets, original dialogue choices, and a possible NPC companion system (I don't know if they still do, but I read that once when it was first shown in some gameplay preview), AND it's made by Bioware...I'm pretty sure they game is ANYTHING but a WOW clone.

 

[sir.rutthed]

Saying WOW is an "Everquest Clone" is like saying Half-Life is a Doom clone. Just because two games are in the same genre doesn't mean one is a clone of the other. WoW had enough innovations that it was significantly different than Everquest at the time of its launch. So congrats. You just revealed to the world that you've never played, read, or heard a cent about Everquest.

I played EverQuest since it's release and continued to do so for another 5 years. During that time I made multiple lifelong friendships, two of which I still keep in contact with today, and raided with a highly regarded guild (Triton). I also beta tested WoW and played it collectively for about 3 years, some of that time playing around 100 hours a week and more.

I hope that means I'm sufficiently educated on the subject to discuss it.

.
. .

I just want to offer up my opinion that WoW is in fact more similar to EverQuest than EverQuest was to it's predecessors. WoW created the modern MMO industry, but I think EQ created the first real MMO.

Here's a good article that discusses it:
[link]http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/ten-years-of-everquest-article[/link]

 

[Slowpool]

Two things:

1. Fuck that. Dragon Age 2 was a good game.
-snip-

1. No, let's not fuck that. Dragon Age 2 was not a good game.
-snip-

Dear sir, you seem upset.

NWN was a bad game. 3rd edition rules, bad story and pacing (go out and collect these things. Face boss. Go out and collect MORE things, etc.) The mechanics did little to help (see: 3rd ed rules); the only thing that made it worth buying was the second expansion and the ability to play community modules. I would say that the first two parts of NWN, vanilla and the first expansion, are inferior to DA2 in EVERY WAY. The story of Underdark was only moderately more interesting.

The fact that you knew exactly what your abilities did gave no real benefit to the gameplay. Casting spells was so trivial (later on, anyway) that it would have been more challenging to have mana; if you're not playing badly, you have so many spells per day that you can to whatever the fuck you want without worrying because you can REST as soon as the peoples are dead. 5 seconds, you're back to full everything. Besides, what happens if you DIDN'T play a caster? The ONLY thing you can do is auto attack in that case, whereas in DA2 you have to use your wits to cover all three roles.

TL;DR, DA2 stomps NWN.

You seem to prefer mechanics to everything else. You completely ignore the apparent story aspect, which the rest of us are interested in, so we are really in two different worlds. You're not actually wrong, but you have a different idea of what makes a game good.

OT:
I'm looking forward to this. I played WoW for 4 years, and I only stopped because of the dungeon grinding and the impersonality of the story. The mechanics are solid, I personally think, so I really don't see a problem. The only thing that bothers me is the speech wheel; I've ALWAYS hated that, when it would have been infinitely more practical and appreciable to give us a list of exactly what we say. In spite of that, I look forward to playing a Sith Inquisitor who finds he has a heart of gold.

 

[Slowpool]

WOW clone would be Runes Of Magic, which is basically the same game copy and pasted with some small tweaks here and there. Considering the the new Bioware game is Starwars and not WOW, and that it has voiced dialouge, different planets, original dialogue choices, and a possible NPC companion system (I don't know if they still do, but I read that once when it was first shown in some gameplay preview), AND it's made by Bioware...I'm pretty sure they game is ANYTHING but a WOW clone.

People say it's a clone because of your hotkey bars and cooldowns, basically. Running around, use powerful ability, use smaller abilities, use powerful ability when it's back up, repeat. I can SORT of see where they're coming from, but the only problem WoW had was that was ALL you did. The monotony will, I think, be broken up by the character interactions.