Purkit

@Valdur

Agreed, the player character animation is certainly the weakest part of the package, although they could maybe do with some work on the particle/effects as well (the fire effect looks really cheap IMO).

Personally I think most people that complain about modern MMO design (which includes me sometimes) are bemoaning the lack of ambition or daring in MMO design today.

In the past, the impression was that MMOs were developed to be massive sprawling, dynamic, virtual worlds where anything was possible. The design intention was to create a place that felt real. It is irrelevant that these games were mostly unsuccessful. Its the design intention which is important. That intention seeped through the terrible UIs and poorly implemented designs, you could feel the designers reaching for the stars.

Today we find ourselves in an older, more cynical industry, will huge budgets, but with less ambition. We play 'products' based on business models, using tick box design. What little innovation we see is either based around money and how best to extract it from the consumer, or smaller systems tacked onto the successful themepark design model.

I'm not saying SWTOR or Rift or any other modern MMO doesn't innovate at all, but they do seem to have lost that spark of daring we saw in the early days of MMO design. Its a money game now and there is no going back. You may think I'm naive to believe its not always been about the money. I'd argue in the early days of MMO development, it was harder for the money to get in the way, simply because the money men didn't have a clue what was a good or bad investment. Nowadays it seems to be about reaching that minimum themepark design standard and then adding something extra, just to show everyone you aren't just cloning the... game that shall not be mentioned :)

Sorry to hear the game is shutting and I wish the devs and everyone at Masthead the best. As much as I feel for these guys, I'm also hoping this will help push other devs into developing sandbox games will less of a PvP focus.

@Space Cobra

Great post, very close to my thoughts.

Nice to see them thinking ahead.

The launch may not have been 100% smooth, but overall its been fairly solid. The patch wasn't trouble free but seriously, after some of the game launches we've seen over the years, how can anyone seriously say this has been a bad launch. You've not seen a bad launch until you've lived through AO's launch and its months of fixing one bug and adding three more.

@Critical Mass

I don't want EA to suffer any financial difficulties due to this, so I'll be signing up for however long it takes for the game to be profitable. It maybe necessary to indenture my children as well, but its worth it for a good Star Wars MMO.

@Ryn

"I've seen better come out of Indy developers... "

I'm fairly sure you were just trying to illustrate your point and this wasn't meant as a demonstrable fact. However, if you are hiding some indie game with production values on the lines of SWTOR, please tell me, I want to invest right now!

@Matix

I largely agree with you, however I'm not so sure about this:

"And when a MMO *IS* innovative, players don't support it."

It could be argued that some indie studios have released titles which are innovative, Xsyon would be a good example. Unfortunately most are broken and poorly implemented IMO. It also seems no one can innovate in this industry without making a hardcore PvP sandbox style game, minus most of the sandbox.

Don't get me wrong, I applaud the efforts of indie companies to innovate. I've bought a few of the more interesting ones, even knowing they wouldn't be for me. I just don't think its fair to say players don't support innovation when the only choice on the 'innovation shelf' is the flawed product.

@mattaui

Sure Skyrim has bugs, but its also a great game. Bugs can be squashed from great games. I have no idea what Interplay would have done with the brand, but I'm fairly sure Bethesda (if they make the MMO) will produce something on a grand scale, probably with lots of bugs, but you can fix bugs fairly easily (and cheaply), poor game design is harder to correct.

When I had another go at AoC I was really impressed with the Dreamworld Engine. Its certainly looks great.

Personally I'm in two minds about TSW. The one thing I really hated about AoC was the feeling that the world was just a bunch of unconnected zones. The loading screens killed my immersion. It was a real disappointment after playing Anarchy Online. AO maybe old but the world felt connected and real to me. AoC felt like a bunch of unconnected zones. I'm hoping the travel system in TSW is elegant enough to make me believe the world is one cohesive world.

I also hope they add some of that whimsical humour AO had, I really missed that in AoC.