The Old Republic vs. World of Warcraft - Round 1

So I've been following the development of the upcoming MMO The Old Republic reasonably well but there still isn't a ton of information. As the game isn't slated the be released for another year that is to be expected.

ToR has a few things over WoW already, but this is also to be expected. As a 10 year MMO veteran I've come to expect that the next generation of MMOs will be successful if they follow one rule: Take all the things that players think is tedious and hinders the gameplay experience they want and get rid of them.

WoW toppling the previous MMO big dog Everquest back when it released is the most classic example of this. In EQ it took an obscenely long time to level - think years, it was nearly impossible to do anything meaningful by yourself and while the game may have been balanced in a way, it definitely was not balanced in a way that you could pick up a player you liked regardless of class and do something new and interesting. In fact, near the time I quit playing each successive expansion that came out was tailored more and more towards the powergaming elite who spent so much time playing the game to stay competitive that maintaining a job of any sort and in some cases even a sleep schedule were impossible.

WoW destroyed all of these MMO archetypes even when it was still new back in 2004. And if a new MMO is going to stand up against WoW not only are they going to have to smash some MMO concepts in favor of the player experience but they'll have to make sure it works - without making it just another WoW clone.

ToR has a pretty good start in this regard from what I've seen and my main focus for this entry will be in terms of the game's story.

WoW has always had story built into their game content, but when you decide to level a character the vast majority of players want to get through it as fast as possible. This means that every page of quest dialog and every place in the world the NPC you're dealing with has is completely ignored. WotLK did a better job of this by using phasing technology to give the players a first hand view of many events that had transpired in Northrend leading up to the quest they're currently working on. Even so, most of these cut scenes were riddled with dialog bubbles you'd have to read if you wanted to know what was going on - dialog bubbles that could be easily ignored if you have a television in the room to keep you occupied until you get dinged with a Quest Complete! message.

ToR has made the commitment to not only be an intensely story driven game, but they've commited to having every PC and NPC alike in the game full voiceovers. If you tried out Age of Conan when it went live you may remember the gloriously vibrant starting isle of Tortage where every NPC talked to you in full voiceover. Once you departed from the isle, however, everyone but your storyline NPC fell deathly silent.

Aside from the full voiceovers ToR offers completely different sotrylines and game experiences for each different class in the game. So if you play a Bounty Hunter character and later decide to try out a Sith Warrior you're storyline and game experience will be completely different. No more agonizing because you want to level a shaman but dread suffering through the same starging zone - again!

But I don't want to ruin the whole thing for you, so I'll let the developers themselves show you what to expect from ToR.