In news which should come as a shock to absolutely nobody, apparently Star Wars The Old Republic, the new Bioware MMO, is pretty much World of Warcraft with a different coat of paint and voiceovers. Rock, Paper, Shotgun has a great article up thisaway:
Hands On The Old Republic, Part One
The part that sticks out to me is the notion that SWTOR’s “kill ten rats” quests are different because we somehow care about what is happening. (Have you ever noticed that the argument is almost always “it’s different this time”, and how uncomfortably close that is to the rationale for going back to an abusive relationship?) To which my natural question is:
When did you stop caring about what happened in your old MMO?
Y’see, there are quests in WoW that have emotional resonance. It’s just that the second time through, the effect is diminished. …and when you get tired of the same old mechanical aspects of the kill and fetch quests. Then there’s the whole gear-loot scheme that pretty much short-circuits the motivation for questing. “Yeah, yeah, sure, old man, I’ll go fetch the remains of your lost family by slaughtering owlbears and digging through their remains for a while, but what’s in it for me?”
Long story short, I suspect that the quests in SWTOR feel different pretty much only because they are new. Let’s see how they feel on your third Jedi alt, or after 200 hours of play. Let’s see how emotionally involving it is to down that raid boss for the fifteenth time because he just won’t drop your wristguards. At some point, the honeymoon wears off and you realize you’re mechanically doing the same thing you’ve always done. The emotional resonance wears off because you see behind the curtain.
Window dressing really can go a long ways to selling something, it’s true. It’s just that there has to be more to a game than the trappings.
I should note that this doesn’t mean that SWTOR won’t be fun, rather, I’m just noting that there’s not a lot there to be terribly excited about, at least mechanically. It’s more of the same. That’s not bad either, if that’s what you’re looking for.
Tish Tosh Tesh 
Despite being bored by the same old shit for almost a decade some people just can’t let go of it. 🙂
Your abusive relationship comparison is quite accurate, looking for reasons why it is now “different” shows how delusional the addict MMO gamer craving a new fix of his crack can be.
I can’t say I blame a MMO for having some kind of kill quest. Killing things is what MMOs are about in the end. Unless you make it completely PvP or want players to kill stuff without quest, you have kill quests …
Besides: WoW tried hard to get away from kill quests by adding all kind of gimmick quests. Can’t say I approve.
It may sound the same, but it feels different. You aren’t tasked with killing ten rats. You’re tasked with saving a village, or freeing a prisoner. Killing ten guards or blowing up three towers is something you do on the fly while on your way to the objective. It feels very different.
I suspect SWtOR will be like RIFT, where it’s new and shiny for a bit, then it devolves into the same stuff with people losing interest faster than before. It sounds like SWtOR was crafted a bit too much like a single-player game. A shame, because I know they have some experienced MMO devs on the team. We’ll see how it goes, I guess. But, if I were forced to guess, I’d say that we won’t be talking fondly of the 10th anniversary of SWtOR.
But, if I were forced to guess, I’d say that we won’t be talking fondly of the 10th anniversary of SWtOR.
Should we? Of any MMO? I always thought it was weird that quantity > quality when it came to judging an MMO experience. I can kinda understand it from the “developing relationships” angle, as that is hard work you wouldn’t want washed away because they pulled the plug five years from now.
That said, an MMO or quest feeling fresh because it’s new is enough. I did not play WoW for ~7700 hours because it still felt refreshing or novel after the 800th heroic completed. I played because I made friends there, and it was important to do something together.
The longevity of an MMO is entirely based on what goes on in the endgame.
I’m a big SW fan, I played SWG from beta 3 until the NGE destroyed it. I’ve been looking forward to TOR for a while too. However, with other projects I have forthcoming and the lack of an MMO in my life right now I am even more conflicted about whether I want this or not. I am enjoying the fact with no subscription nor guild I am not beholden to playing to keep up with either the levelling/content nor what is happening in game and I am very much enjoying that. If TOR does end up being a WoW style grind (the reason I left WoW behind) then getting into that same regimen again will not hold me for long. WHile I look forward to the potential RP scene perhaps my life would be better served by keeping the extra free time I have now and not being sat infront of a PC every night wasting the time I have been blessed with.
Ancestor: Could you tell us more?
Alot of quests I’ve run across in other mmorpgs are “Hey , do this bit part thing for me, so I may do the big important thing (which you wont be doing, because A: your just one player in a million and B: Were just giving the illusion of change)”
Atleast if your saving the village or freeing a prisoner, it sounds like your doing the important thing, not just enabling yet another NPC to be awesome.