Hypester

What a hilariously ubiquitious debate.

I say less, mostly because "big new" MMOs are so utterly reliant on questing its hilarious. Give playesr an opportunity to forge their own fun out of your ownline world and grow that way. In short: put your theme park in a big giant desert. Let players go off the beaten path, and come back if they like... just supply them with the tools to build, and you may find your theme park in the middle of a sandy metropolis.

Are you sure you're not thinking about Star Wars? Everytime I've seen two ships face each other they've both been using the same Z-axis. Not realistic, but very Star Trek-like to limit Z-axis movement.

This is another one of those things that's not really "wrong" but gets thrown in alongside real complaints like bait-and-switch lifetime subbing.

There are a lot of little things I expect from this, and would enjoy. As hotspots emerge, they become new settings in the tv show. TV within-the-show, news articles, billboards, all of these could be littered with shoutouts to players, perhaps even an aspect of being on certain leaderboards.

There's a lot of room for cross-pollination between developers and producers, but a MMO player-driven TV show? I don't think that's what they're saying at all, and I'm pretty sure it ain't gonna happen.

Regardless of the issues with the SG franchise, can anyone really say Cheyenne had a better alternative? This actually has a chance of success, or, if you prefer, becoming an actual game.

What they've talking about is "phasing", in so much as some of your actions only affect your world. You could be running through an area and in the background see a temple that you've destroyed. The person next to you hasn't completed that mission, or completed it differently, so they don't see the temple as destroyed. At least, that's what I understand from what they've said.

All other things being equal, the game with voice acting is superior. Obviously, if TOR sucks, Voice Acting will not save it, but as far as hat-hanging, it makes little sense to hang your hat on things that all MMOs have and do (and that have not been finalized for your game, or approved by marketing for release), rather than the one thing that TOR is doing that hasn't been done before, seems pretty much impossible and generally stirs up a whole lot of attention, positive, negative and otherwise.

IF the other elements aren't there, then yes, VO will not be a good thing... but if they are there, and they claim they will be there, then VO can only be an improvement. Not for all, I suppose, but for the vast majority.

That's a common assumption, but there's really no basis to conclude TOR won't have combat in persistent areas. They've also referred more to phasing (think pseudo-instancing) than actual instancing.

They'll be here, as soon as they get done signing up for Beta...

Aaaand down again.

They got a lot of 'splainin to do!

Site is back up. Announcment is back up. Can't login though. Maybe overloaded?