So, Star Wars: The Old Republic is offering a free trial weekend and I apparently got a whole week of free trial because I don't know why and I fully intend to not be lazy and actually play the game a bit and do a blog like I did with my Rift one the other day, but firstly, I want to make a comment on the story. And why I don't like it so far.
DUN DUN DUNNNNN
Yeah, I know, a lot of people are gushing about how amazing the storytelling is in SW:TOR but there's one huge thing that was bugging me. Firstly though, I just want to make one minor note so that you know the context and so you can abuse me for having not played the game enough: I rolled a Twi'lek Jedi, because it's freaking Star Wars and I can't play a Star Wars game without being a Jedi, and so far, I'm level 4 or so. So no, I've barely made it through anything, not even the start zone yet, so chances are, I'm entirely wrong about what I'm gonna moan about, and it's just the way I'm seeing things from my low levelled vantage point. So why am I posting this as a separate blog post and not just writing a big blog post about my adventures in TOR? I'm not sure, but I kinda want to discuss this and spend a decent amount of time on this and not detract from a blog going on about the game more. Plus, it's a problem that basically every MMORPG suffers from and probably isn't even solvable but it's still one that Bioware should've worked around.
But anyway! That's enough prefacing. Onto my problem!
They seem to have forgotten about the MMO part of MMORPG. The story plays like a single player RPG. Which is fine for a single player game, but for an MMORPG, it detracts from the experience for me. What am I talking about?
Basically, the story focuses entirely around me and my character. It makes me the hero and all this stuff is happening solely to me. As an example, I went into a cave to kick some ass on some Flesh Raiders because they'd been kicking ass on some Twi'leks and I happened to find a droid hiding in there. Woo! Awesome! I found a friend! And so did three other people nearby. They also found the exact same droid. And got their own copy of the droid that I found. At another point, a great and wise Jedi Master took me on as his first padawan for years, except the thousands of other padawans he also has been taking on since everyone does the same questline.
Now, this is probably sounding very nitpicky, but I honestly just found it really distracting. I didn't feel like I was playing in a world filled with other people who were also trying to help out these people, I felt like I was the hero. Which is fine for a single player game, but an MMORPG isn't about that.
Now, like I said, this is a problem that every MMORPG suffers from because obviously, to tell a story, it needs to focus on the player to a point. It's a basic part of storytelling in a game and it's not going to be easy to get away from. But that doesn't mean it has to be like that. What do I mean?
An excellent example, in my opinion, is the Death Knight start zone in World of Warcraft. If you've never made a Death Knight on WoW, you probably should (Okay, some of you don't want to) because I consider their start zone to be the best piece of storytelling in WoW to date. There's a clear story, it's interesting, it's fun, you get some interesting moral dilemmas popping up and all in all, it's one of the most fun things I've done on WoW in terms of storytelling. What does this have to do with this blog? Outside of a handful of quests in the zone (Most notably, the one where you have to kill a former friend of yours), every quest isn't about making you the hero, it's about the journey of Darion Mograine's Death Knights as a whole and their mission. You don't feel like you're the one person going off to save the day, because for most of the quests, you have a bunch of other initiates (Most of them NPCs) doing the same quests as you and on the same missions as you. It's the sort of storytelling an MMORPG should have, where you truly feel like you're in a big world, filled with other people that you can freely interact with.
Again, I'm probably being really nitpicky, and I can't say what SW:TOR as a whole is like because I've played so little of it, but it was something that was just constantly jumping out at me and it's something that I really think could've been done a whole lot better. Is it a deal-breaker for TOR for me? Not sure. I do love my Star Wars, but on the other hand, it'll take a lot to get me to stop my probably bad WoW addiction. We'll see!
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