BioWare's Erickson talks about creating MMO story

@Miffy If you're going to hate, better hate well.

@Miffy. It's much more like Phantasy Star Online / Universe.

@thanatos465 "I think the game is trash." Fixed that for ya.

@DancingCow

You might want to look up what clone means because last I checked it looks nothing like WoW. Lets see Allods online now that looks like a WoW clones same classes same cartoony graphics and same gameplay yep that seems like a clone. Now lets compare star wars hmm they have light sabers, better graphics, different abilities. Pvp is different, space missions hmm what else speeder bikes yeah not a clone. So check yourself before you wreck yourself.

@wilus84 If you want to mince words, then yeah it's not an identical genetic copy of WoW. However, they are essentially fraternal twins. They don't look the same and they have different personalities, but underneath those superficial aspects they have extremely similar DNA.

And I agree with DancingCow that it's very disappointing how little Bioware has done to improve on the same old MMO gameplay formula that's been stale for years at this point.

@wilus84. I can't tell if you're stupid or just in denial, no offense intended. This game is clearly based from WoW. If you don't see that then you shouldn't really talk like you know anything.

@wilus84
Sure buddy, because SWTOR has hyper-realistic graphics, where the world is populated by species differentiated solely by superficial crap such as # of tentacles/functioning eyes/horns/skin color/cybernetic modifications, and move between four body types.

It's WoW in space with a poor facelift and an amateur boobjob, you know it, sir, don't bash (f2p! even) games to justify your bad taste and judgement.

@wilus84 The term "clone" is obviously a metaphor, since games don't have nuclear acid strings which determine their ability to encode important proteins.

Given the metaphorical use of the word, it seems reasonable to assume that it could refer to something other than look literally identical. Although, in a sense, SWTOR does have WoW's visual style in terms of being highly stylized.

When you look at the "DNA" of SWTOR, the underlying structure of the game and even the various conventions it uses (such as using identical color coding for rarity as one trivial but obvious example) it's pretty clearly a clone of WoW. Not in the biological sense where it is literally identical in every possible way (that would be copyright infringement, after all) but in the metaphorical sense that the core design decisions and elements are identical to WoW. So much so that many of them appear to have been chosen not for the same reasons they were chosen in WoW but literally because they are what WoW chose.

In other words, Bioware didn't merely wind up in the same place by accident, they wound up in many of the same places as a result of simply deciding it was too much trouble to design a system or idea if they could simply lift it from WoW.

TL;DR: Maybe YOU should learn what "clone" means in this context.

@Mystal That should say "...nucleic acid strings..." not "...nuclear..."

@Mystal
Personally, I prefer to think about it like WoW getting some intimate time alone with Mass Effect and both parents passing along their good genes to their child.

Then again I'm weird , imagining two noncorporeal entities engaging in sexy, sexy coitus and spawning a third noncorporeal entity.

@Mystal

In short, take a slice of most any major feature in SWOTR, put it side by side with WoW (or practically any other mainstream MMO to date), and it is very much is cloned.

Some people don't mind that its cut from the same cloth, others were hoping for some more progressive design choices.

@wilus84 "Now lets compare star wars hmm they have light sabers"

Is that a self inflicted touche?

@Quidveritas

Um content updates?

@Equillian. DLC you have to pay $15 a month for? Yeah, you won't even get the good DLC for another 3-6 months.

@Quidveritas

Although I enjoy both raiding (not hardcore...did plenty of that in my EQ days...no desire to devote my life to a video game anymore) and PvP, there are plenty of reasons to play MMOs if you don't.

For starters, there's community. Booting up Dragon Age or Mass Effect and playing through single player content is all well and good, but it gets awful lonely. At least in MMOs you have interaction with real people while playing and there exists a level of community...as the Cheers theme song used to go, "Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name", and it's a lot easier to convince the wife to let you do that in a video game than it is to convince her to let you go to your neighborhood bar (and let's face it, it's a lot more fun in an MMO as well).

As an extension of this, there are your friends. Oh, there are plenty of youngsters out there who guild hop and never form any real connections with those they game with in MMOs. But there are a lot of us who have made real friendships with people over the years. I've been friends with many of my guildies since the old EQ days. We've had RL get togethers, stay in contact even when there is no MMO that appeals to us and have watched one another mature, get married, have kids and excel in our chosen careers irl. But all of us still enjoy gaming and after all the kids are in bed you can find us on whatever MMO has drawn us into it at the time (WoW held many of us for many, many years).

Lastly, there's persistance. In an MMO the world goes on with or without you. You're presence and absence alike are felt. Quit playing DA or ME for a month or two and you can come back and jump right in where you left off. Nothing has changed. Oh, you might be able to grab a DL pack, but that's completely optional. On the other hand, go absent from an MMO for a month or two and odds are, when you come back, a lot will have changed. Your guild will have pushed through whatever content it was focused on and you'll have to play catch up to be able to rejoin them. New dungeons will be added and you'll probably have trouble finding people who'd rather do the older content. These things add a sense of depth or realness to the game.

So why would you play an MMO if you aren't into hardcore raiding or PvP, you ask?

Well, my friend, if hardcore raiding and PvP are the reasons you play MMOs, you're doing it wrong.