A Galaxy Far, Far Away
Having seen the most recent chunk of video posted on IGN, I think I finally have a better handle on Bioware’s upcoming MMO The Old Republic. The central concept was one I struggled to understand back when the game was first announced back in 2008[1].
For those not already in the know, Star Wars: The Old Republic (to give it its full title) was announced to great fanfare, with Bioware declaring that they planned to bring their proven skill with plot and character to the MMO space.
I should have been more excited by this declaration. Under normal circumstances I would walk through fire in order to get my paws on a new Bioware title, and I’ve been waiting for an MMO to truly capture my attention for pretty much as long as the genre has been around[2].
It was difficult, however, not to feel that Bioware had missed the point. They were talking about adding ‘career specific’ storylines to the game. While I’d expect those storylines to be crafted with all of Bioware’s customary care and skill, that means that an eighth of the players in the game would have been through to same story as me. What’s the point of becoming Champion of Such-and-Such, Slayer of Darth What’s-His-Face, if every eighth person in the galaxy has already Championed Such-and-Such, kerb-stomped What’s-His-Face and sold on the loot drop because it didn’t help maximise their build?
I agree, whole-heartedly, that more massively multiplayer games need a stronger story component. But just straight out telling your players a story is never going to work. The trick to narrative in an MMO is putting the structures in place to encourage players to create stories with each other. EVE Online gives a good example of what I mean. The players have such a massive influence on the gameworld that wars have started, alliances have been forged, empires and business have risen and fallen, all of it player driven, and each event generating thousands of attendant stories.
If you want to take it a step further, what you really need to do is mechanically reward dramatic behaviour. For example, if the game has a significant combat element, rewarding players for repeated clashes with the same opponent encourages the development of personal foes and nemeses, rather than a faceless mass of opponents.
Whilst I still think they’ve missed a trick, the video on IGN did at least show something that looked enjoyable: not a massively multiplayer RPG in the truest sense of the word, but a co-op RPG where all of the players in the party could be involved in the conversations as well as the combat. That’s an interesting idea, and one I can see myself enjoying, but it doesn’t really take any advantage of the thousands of other players running around outside of your immediate group (surely the largest asset of any MMO), and it still leaves the fact that you can presumably talk, in game, to other people who have undertaken the same stories constantly gnawing away at your suspension of disbelief.
It’s early days, of course, and there’s still time for Bioware to turn around and blow everyone away with some amazing innovation. As things stand, however, it’s hard to shake the feeling that whilst they might be building something interesting, its core gameplay will be undermined rather than strengthened by the MMO format.
