Gaming Thread

Also, TOR has the fastest-growing subscription rate in MMO history.

That's cool. I hope they make piles of cash and make enough updates to the game that it will rival WoW. For whatever reason, a lot of people like to shit talk that game, but it was one of the most popular in the world for a very long time for a very good reason. It was quite simply a great game for many years. Maybe if they get some direct competition for a change, they will stop resting on their laurels and get their act together again.

The fact of the matter is, if you like Star Wars and you like MMOs, you're going to like TOR. A LOT.

I had been considering checking it out for a while, but I'm not going to. I've already spent ten years in the MMO scene, and after the breakup of my four year WoW guild (full of the most awesome people ever, a fifth of which I'd been playing with for two years until it's formation), and bouncing around looking for the next best thing; I don't want to deal with the online bullshit any longer. I can't play casually either, so that's part of the issue.

Star Wars transcends entire generations. Here's proof.

Haha. No need to show proof man. It's more than a phenomenon, it's literally a world cultrure. I remember going to see the original for my birthday at the drive in when I was five, and I remember my grandmother taking me to see Empire on it's opening weekend as a suprise (we had planned to go see some dumb cartoon movie). Funny thing is, on my fifth birthday all I wanted was a single Luke, and I ended up with FIVE Vaders. WTF?

I'm a huge star wars nerd but i refuse to play this, the graphics alone make me question my faith in humanity, never mind the fact that space is on rails...that just makes me want to punch babies.

You do understand why the graphics are the way they are, right?
 
Because Bioware wanted to copy World of Warcrafts cartoony, easy to run, successful art style, like they copied damn near everything else from them.

And please, don't tell me what Blizzard did and did not take from Everquest, I was playing that long before WoW rolled around.

The fact of the matter is, if you like Star Wars and you like MMOs, you're going to like TOR. A LOT.

Nope. Although, I hope it kills WoW anyway so we can finally get Warcraft 4.

Went back to a friends house to try this fucking thing again. Hated it even more than I did the first time. I won't trash it anymore, have fun guys.
 
I played WoW for years as well before getting into Eve. Eve is still number 1 for me, though. WoW was and still is a great game, it's just that it has run its course. People love to talk shit about it just because it's a popular game and isn't very hardcore, but it's still great. I just got bored after three years or so and quit.

I think you'd really like TOR. It's really new so it's lacking some things but it's lots of fun. Not many guilds right now and everyone's kinda feeling it out, but it's great fun. The approach is different from other MMOs in the sense that it feels almost like a single-player rpg, hence the KOTOR references.

I had those Vader action figures too! The one with the red plastic stick that was supposed to be a lightsaber, haha! I used to keep it in my pocket in kindergarten and go outside at recess and stick his feet into the tree bark on the playground and pretend he was using the force, LOL.

Off the top of my head, I'd say it needs a "dungeon" queue, more guilds, and a summoning mechanism. You can't "warp/summon/beam" people to you like you can in WoW for dungeons. It makes things a little slower. The grouping is interesting as well. Max groups are like 4 people with a companion, which can be a droid or another jedi/sith that's part of your storyline, and while the mechanics are usually tank/healer/dps, the way they've created the classes allows you to almost choose which one you are. If you're an Inquisitor or whatever the Jedi equivalent is, you can do good DPS as well as heal, so it's kind of a hybrid. Plus, there's something to be said about four people with different lightsabers wailing on a boss.

The companions are interesting. They're like pets but not. They're almost like another character following you around but who can really take care of themselves...I find myself in situations where I wouldn't survive without them, actually. I think the people who don't like it are people who don't really like MMOs in the first place. I'm picky about MMOs these days myself, so I can understand. Still, I wasn't that interested in it until I tried it. I haven't been able to tear myself away from it since.

I honestly don't see the big deal over the graphics. The areas in this game are nothing short of jaw-dropping; looking up in Coruscant and seeing the ceiling a mile above your head is just amazing. I'm on Taris now, which is a sort of annoying place due to having to run everywhere, but it's an old ruin. The scope of the ruins and fallen buildings and such is mind-boggling, and honestly it looks pretty damn good. The depth in the environments is great.
 
it's not the graphics, those are fine it's just the art style sucks bawls.


my bad should have rephrased that :p

I mean i've been playing League for like a year and a half and I have no problem with the fact that the graphics are bad, i just dont like the art style of either, cartoon-y always looks bad.
 
The graphics look no different than they did in KOTOR, aside from having been improved a lot and look a lot sharper with better cutscenes. I guess if you thought KOTOR was cartoon-y then you'd think this is as well, but it's not really that cartoon-y. It's not Mass Effect, but it's still great.

In fact, I don't like RPGs that look realistic...I want a game to look like a game. If I'm playing some sort of simulator then I want it to look realistic, but fantasy video games? I want it to look like a game, not a movie.
 
The graphics look no different than they did in KOTOR, aside from having been improved a lot and look a lot sharper with better cutscenes. I guess if you thought KOTOR was cartoon-y then you'd think this is as well, but it's not really that cartoon-y. It's not Mass Effect, but it's still great.

In fact, I don't like RPGs that look realistic...I want a game to look like a game. If I'm playing some sort of simulator then I want it to look realistic, but fantasy video games? I want it to look like a game, not a movie.

kotor looks nothing like old republic...
 
I have to agree with ShadowsWithin here. The characters look the worst, and most "cartoonish". Arnold type muscular builds don't really fit into the star wars universe. The graphics are sharper than KOTOR, yes, but the art style is frequently over-the-top in a way that I find cheesy and inappropriate. So much fun though.

At least the lightsabers are slightly less flashlight sized since the first development screens.
 
Hopefully. Persona 4 is better in every conceivable way.

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P5 has been in development for sometime now and should be announced pretty soon.
 
I agree with deadwinter on pretty much everything. tor is the shit, and the cartoony graphics are obviously to make it so more people can play. overall i still think its an amazing game and its fairly deep; i quite love being able to do missions while my companions are out doing missions, then use the stuff they get to craft things etc. my crew skills are archaeology, artifice and treasure hunt and they all work together to allow me to have another awesome gameplay level. the ship combat also rules; yeah i know it would be nice ot have freeroam and whatnot but honestly that'd be hard as fuck, and the star fox esque ship combat makes for a good distraction with some awesome rewards and is quite fun (especially when you do stuff similar to the movies like flying through asteroid fields).

all in all i'm still having a blast. i hope it really does get even bigger and more successful, because considering how expansive and intense the vanilla game is having huge expansions would be bomb. i'm level 28 and still having as much fun as when i started, and when i finish this characters story/get to level 50 i'm going to start up a new character and my friend is also going t oget the game and we're going to fuckin rule the galaxy.

there are a lot of shortcomings though i agree: some major repetitiveness, some quests being lame, graphics and art design (but then again they gotta make it easy for people to run) and a couple of other minor flaws but to me its all made up for with the amazing soundtrack, world design, fun as fuck gameplay, easy and fun social interaction, getting to do all this in the star wars lore (with tons of stuff i didn't know about/am having a blast discovering etc) and the fact of how it ties into the movies. they can't tie in directly, but when they include missions/areas that are familiar its just awesome.

lastly (i had to make a separate paragraph just to emphasize this): PVP IS FUCKING AWESOME. huttball is the shit, the rewards are awesome, and being able to do pvp in a controlled manner as well as regularly is legit as fuck. duels and regular pvp is great, but playing huttball and all the rewards that go with it just adds another facet of pure awesomeness, and all these little things that add into the total package are what make it so awesome (though i haven't tried one of the modes yet, and the assault mode blows).
 
All that matters is Persona 5 is going to be announced very soon. "What you've all been waiting for." It will be the definitive JRPG of this generation, not that it's had much competition because the Japanese are obsessed with handhelds. Ugh.

I'm telling you Stormo... I know after so many hours in P3 you might feel burnt out, but Persona 4 really is so much better. Characters, dungeons, "Who Done it?" murder storyline, atmosphere, gods, it's in my top 3 games. It's better than Skyrim. Way better.

But didn't you also buy Nocturne? You might enjoy that more.