Story is a MUST for me, now. I'm SO TIRED of textbox questing which has NO impact on my gameplay experience whatsoever other than to make it boring and stagnant.
I think it's the number 1 thing that mmos miss. They don't say hey your making a choice now. Instead you have to "pretend" like your changing your character when your reall not. Top reason I want to play SWTOR, Too bad I don't really have the money...
I think it's the number 1 thing that mmos miss. They don't say hey your making a choice now. Instead you have to "pretend" like your changing your character when your reall not. Top reason I want to play SWTOR, Too bad I don't really have the money...
It's called ROLE PLAYING not pretending. Role playing implies you are creating your story, not being driven down a specific path with a few possible twists. The whole genre was about making your own story. Was ...
Story is necessary to build environment for you to role play in. Story that tells you exactly what your character is, or has become .. is not role playing.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Story is a MUST for me, now. I'm SO TIRED of textbox questing which has NO impact on my gameplay experience whatsoever other than to make it boring and stagnant.
Reading allows for imagination. I for one will miss it.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Is it necessary? Yes, story is necessary. However, the story we have been provided in the past was and still is plenty.
Silverbranch: This would depend on the game.
Are voice overs necessary? No. And quite the contrary unwelcome from my perspective. Too Soon!!! Seriously .. Ragnaros' speech is boring. Not because of bad voice acting or bad story, but because ... who cares? You didn't just spend 3 hours clearing lava dogs because of story and you never will more than once. It's "neat" the first time you hear it .. and absolutely mind numbing the 50th time.
Silverbranch: Voice overs are necessary as one premise of an MMO is the fact it's a "living, breathing world", albiet a roughly simulated one. Still, we operate on the principal of interacting with others in the game, NPCs or Players, and hearing them speak is simply an expected. Only one thing remains then: Either do it well, or do it poorly. A squeaky-voiced 11 year old isn't going to have the same impact as the voice over of a World boss that a deep voiced adult male would.
This means that if voice overs are inevitable, they should be done well, because the only voice overs that I've found unwelcome, or even counter productive, are crudy voice overs with lousy voices and amateur acting skills.
Ragnaros's speech is only boring to you. I found it in keeping with the entire scenario, and it definitely added to the event. Raggy was one of the most impressive bosses to ever encounter.
As to it being boring the 50th time, welcome to MMOs. That "problem" is global to any farmed scenario, therefore not relevant, just inevitable.
When you think about the amount of money these companies, Bioware at least, are pouring into this jibberish many of us are going to have to simply put up with if we want to play. Then look at the number of features: housing, actual space combat, swimming .. there's lots more and plenty of articles to describe the deficiencies ... you wonder who in the right mind are these people defending this decision?
Silverbranch: I agree, companies should spend their money wisely, and not blow it. Why pay, as an example, Shaun Connery 2.5 mill to do voice overs when you can find someone with a great voice, good voicing skills, who can do the job for a fraction.
The trick here is that I don't see voice overs, and well done ones, in competition or in conflict with other things as you do. I see it as a component, one of the gears/cogs, of the whole thing.
You can't swim in an MMO? I mean I know it's been done like that before .. and every time it's like .. what the hell .. it's completely immersion breaking. Voiceovers are just lame. Would have been much better to release a mastered voice communication system or just flat out more content.
Silverbranch: Voice over's aren't lame. It's part of the "skin" to an NPC, as much as it's looks and does add to the experience. Take Capt. Royo out of Tortage in AoC. He's a real chuckle mostly based on the pure personality and tongue-in-cheek he delivers in his inimitable style.
Again, I don't see it as a competative or adversarial thing for development. One of the parts to the whole that has to be done right if it's to do it's part. I'm in agreement with you in spirit that in dealing with the piece parts of the whole you don't inappropriately step on the toes of other things.
They spent ridiculous amounts of money on voice overs. My main issue with that, especially as it pertains to "changing the industry" is that it is not necessary. You say do it right or don't do it. I say don't do it because it is a waste of money that could be better allocated to first and formost an actual space combat system. It amazes me that Bioware / Lucas Arts and so many fans actually think voice over is more important than a mechanic like space in a star wars game. Swimming goes right along with that. I don't have a huge problem with Themepark aspects, but when a game completely strips everything that could even be considered sandbox .. it ceases to be an MMO for me and becomes an RPG with a chat box. Might as well play Starcraft (which i've never played btw). Day and Night cycles, Weather that isn't always on .. These are small things to say the least except for space .. but if you take all of the aspects of the game which couldn't be developed because of the cash spent on voice overs ... it concerns me. I want to like this game .. but it is taking themepark to a new level and ceasing to sound like an MMO.
How is voice over more innovative than a game that finally brings star wars / bioware quality space and otherwise vehicle combat to MMOs?
Innovating in one direction and completely dismantling the other 40% of what makes MMOs MMOs doesn't seem very innovative to me.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
I think it's the number 1 thing that mmos miss. They don't say hey your making a choice now. Instead you have to "pretend" like your changing your character when your reall not. Top reason I want to play SWTOR, Too bad I don't really have the money...
It's called ROLE PLAYING not pretending. Role playing implies you are creating your story, not being driven down a specific path with a few possible twists. The whole genre was about making your own story. Was ...
Story is necessary to build environment for you to role play in. Story that tells you exactly what your character is, or has become .. is not role playing.
Actually role playing says nothing regarding you making your own story.
FF7 (i pick this for familarity) is a role playing game. But the backstory, the character, the story even the end result are all predefined for you the moment you put in the disk. There is no diverging from this path. You must get out of midgar, you must find Sephiroth you must lose Aerith, you must be contaimented by the core, you must beat the main villian (not once but twice) Now you get some choices like breeding chocoboo and getting knights of the round but these are more side quests. The entire game focuses around that unbreaking railroad quest that you must do and you get zero chance to change it. Yet it is a role playing game in the purest sense of the word
Role playing is loosely defined as playing a role of a character. This usually (note the word usually) depicts making a character or playing a character, gaining levels,, skills and equipment either from monsters (in some games) or vendors/stores (in most games.) These characters can either be made by the player or for the player. But role playing says nothing about you creating your own story.
The majority of role playing games both are linear and predfined. and nearly all of them have some kind of story involved in them. Now the question is how linear are those stories. It's just one sect of the RPG game world that voids story in favor of just doing whatever the players want and thats sandbox. Which happens to be a small sect (yes it is, cause the amount of theme park games vastly outweighs the amount of sandbox game) within a small sect known as MMOs within the RPG feild.
Note: i'm not including table top as thats not part of the video game world which i feel is the part of the disccusion we are in, nor larping as thats in real life.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
Oblivion is by far the best sandbox RPG* on the market and has tons of stories!!
Oblivion isn't a pure sandbox. It's partially sandbox. And it's hugely story driven, except you can stop the story and run around and do random stuff if you want, usually more mini stories.
Again, "sandbox" and "story" are not mutualy exclusive terms. "Sandbox" and "Themepark" just describe the approach the game takes to how the player will interact with the narrative.
"Sandbox" allows the player to approach the narrative in an open ended fashion where his actions partialy dictate the course the narrative takes and the conclusions it reaches and how they effect the game world.
In other words it's the players actions that largely dictate how the story unfolds. "Themepark" the player must approach the narrative in a linear fashion. How it will unfold is predetermined and the players actions cannot significantly alter the script. No matter what the player does, they will proceed through the same narrative in the same fashion regardless of thier actions or decisions (because the story will not progress, unless they take the "right" decisions).
All that other "random stuff" in Oblivion actualy becomes part of that players narrative. They help to individualize it. They are not "aside" from players narrative...they ARE the narrative (and frankly were more fun then the main story arc, IMO).
Note that DAO was not completely devoid of sandbox elements. It did allow the player some choices (i.e. goto the Dwarven City first or the Elves, help this companion or not? Back this faction for the Dwarven Throne) that did change the overall narative in some limited ways.
In fact, I would argue that this was one of the largest appeals of the game....and was not an insignificant factor in it's success. It just that it in no way approached the level of openness that Bethesda puts into it's SPRPG's.
I'll also point out that DA2, which was significantly more limited in it's presentation of choices for the player, was coincidentaly significantly less well recieved then it's predecessor.
You're using "sandbox" in a way most gamers don't. If we use you're version then SWTORs dialogue choices and affects on the character would be more "sandbox" than traditional MMOs.
In my mind, the ultimate sandbox is a game that lets the player create, build, destroy anything in the world. Including social systems. Oblivion was a partial sandbox because you could go anywhere at any time and kill creatures, but.... There wasn't much creation or building. And you couldn't destroy *anything* just creatures. That's why it felt like a partial sandbox to me. The side quests were still stories that you followed along to.
If Minecraft ramped up server population limits and it implemented a way to create social systems then I could see it as a true sandbox MMO. Maybe the ultimate sandbox MMO?
As to sandbox vs story. I don't really care as long as it's done well. It is possible to love Mass Effect and Minecraft at the same time.
I believe my use of "sandbox" and "themepark" is inline with commonly accepted usage of the terms. They are 2 extremes on a scale...."sandbox" being the end that allows players the ability to alter/interact with the environment in a less restricted fashion and "themepark" being the end which places severe limts on how the player can interact/alter the game environment.
You're setting up a bit of a strawman arguement, IMO, by contending that in order to qualify as "sandbox" a game has to allow the player to do virtualy anything. If we were to use that same standard for "themepark" then no game in existance really would qualify as a true themepark either...since players would not be able to do anything.... including talk to other players, sell/trade/craft items, or even temporarly kill mobs that are seen by other players...or even press buttons to control thier own characters actions in combat.
In practicality all games are going to fall somewhere in between those 2 extremes on the scale. It's really which end of the scale they tend to favor that will determine if most people consider them as "sandbox" or "themepark."
As a matter of fact, I would consider the dialogue options for characters in TOR as a more "sandbox" element then most MMO's impliment for player dialogue with NPC's. The only factor that largely negates the "sandbox" influence is the fact such choices only alters the game environment FOR THAT CHARACTER, not for the rest of the games population.
That's one of the big differences between the implimentation of that style mechanic in a SPRPG and a MMORPG. In a BIOWARE SPRPG, if the player decides to kill Flemeth (for example)....Flemeth will be dead in the games reality....she will no longer effect the game world. In a BIOWARE MMORPG, Flemeth is only dead for the players that kill her, for others she is alive. They create an alternate, private version of reality for each player.
A more sandbox approach would be to have one unified reality for all players where Flemeth was either dead or alive for ALL players depending upon whether anyone killed her or not. That's how alot of the old school MUDS used to handle thier story lines. It's doable, it just means that the tools for creating/running story arcs have to be efficient enough that if you allow the players to kill off an NPC, they aren't sitting around waiting with nothing interesting to do for 2 years while you build the next NPC/Story Arc. Which is the real problem MMO's have had to date.... they've invested a ton of resources in building fancy graphics engines, high frame rates, smoke, lighting, cutscenes, voice acting, etc.....
But have invested relatively little in tools for quickly and easly creating content and altering the game environment in ways that won't break the game environment. Not that such things are neccesarly easy to do, but neither are alot of the things they've achieved with graphical performance of the engine. It's all a matter of where they choose to put thier investment dollars in technology.
I have to agree with many others and the Author as well, in that it is really a question of Themepark vs Sandbox context.
Being Dictated your story versus Making your own story. Being thrusted in to various adventures by the written story versus stumbling in to various adventures as you go on your own path.
Bioware, may have a point that Story is a Pillar of MMORPG's..but that is only half of the deal..the other half is about how do you implement the focus on the story in an MMORPG...
And I personally think they missed the mark in that second half, in the end, all layers will be rading the same novel and experiencing the same story nevertheless, whether that story is being delivered through text or voice, does not matter, it comes down to the same thing, since the only thing that Bioware is changing is the medium, but the implementation is not so different.
We can all start writing the story step by step separetly and post our results on the net and soon everyone will find out that there is a same story with some variations from the perspective of some different sides or classes.
And everyone, is the hero.
Not really. When I read a book and imagine myself either as the main character or just imagine the main character as part of my imagination and creation I don't suddenly lose all that because other people are reading the same book on the forums. We can talk about the book and our opinions about the characters and events but it doesn't take away from my version of the main character.
The same is true in an MMORPG to me. We all have different versions of our own characters. They look different. We imagine them in different ways. No two people will experience an event in the same way. Even if it's a book and they are reading the exact words, or it's a boss fight in a video game. So the stories, even if there were no different choices in the game, would still be interpreted differently. And yet players can still make choices that individualize their character further.
I look at it like this. If Person A and Person B both go through a story quest, and Person B feels like their experience sucks because their story isn't unique anymore because Person A got a similar story then I think Person B has a very bad imagination.
So how can Person B then go to a sandbox MMO and truly make and forge their own story, if they lack even the imagination to interpret their experience in a dynamic quest in a unique way from person A in a "themepark MMO"? It does not compute. Is Person B really creating a story in this sandbox or are they just jumbling a bunch of random things together and saying "Hey! This is my story!"
Would Person B, who complains about having more uniqueness in his quests in an MMO, be able to sit down with a DM for a table top RPG session and mentally imagine a world? Or would it all be ruined in Person B's mind because that DM just came from another table top RPG session where DMed the same quests?
It's all about the player's imagination. I can create my own story in any MMO, stumble through the world and stumble into my own adventures. I can imagine other players as just random citizens of that world or I can see them as people sitting behind a computer screen looking to get l33t gear. The difference between a heavily sandbox game vs a heavily themepark game is the tools that the developer gives the player to aid their imagination towards those goals.
It's the difference between simply READING a story and participating in the WRITING a story. Both are enjoyable activities in thier own way, but they ARE very different in nature.
Alot of us are looking for a game experience that allows us to play a more active creative role in putting together the story of our characters and the game world at large. Something that harkens back to the gaming experience of PnP RPG's or perhaps text based MUDS/MUSH's.... where the players played an active role in shaping the story and the events that took place in the game world.
The key factor is that while Bioware is presenting us a story....it's not all that much different then the way a movie or novel presents a story. We get to experience SOME ONE elses story... NOT our own. That's not a bad thing, but it's qualitatively a very different experience from something that some-one who really wants to ROLE-PLAY is looking for.
The other critical difference is that ROLE-PLAY (the kind most of us are looking for) is a SHARED creative experience....it's not a monologue, it's a dialogue...where you are weaving the story that you are creating for your character in and around the stories that the other players and the GM are creating.
That's a qualitatively different approach then Bioware is taking with TOR and thier personal story arc's. Thier approach has each character in their own seperate individual version of reality. In my personal story arc, Bubba the Hut may be dead because I chose to kill him...in yours he may be alive because you chose to spare him. So when we try to GET TOGETHER and create a shared story arc that involves Bubba the Hut, we have a logical stumbling block that we have to overcome....since he's dead in my reality and alive in yours...and someones reality (story) is going to have to be invalidated if we ever want to do anything that might involve his status.
I think it's the number 1 thing that mmos miss. They don't say hey your making a choice now. Instead you have to "pretend" like your changing your character when your reall not. Top reason I want to play SWTOR, Too bad I don't really have the money...
It's called ROLE PLAYING not pretending. Role playing implies you are creating your story, not being driven down a specific path with a few possible twists. The whole genre was about making your own story. Was ...
Story is necessary to build environment for you to role play in. Story that tells you exactly what your character is, or has become .. is not role playing.
Actually role playing says nothing regarding you making your own story.
FF7 (i pick this for familarity) is a role playing game. But the backstory, the character, the story even the end result are all predefined for you the moment you put in the disk. There is no diverging from this path. You must get out of midgar, you must find Sephiroth you must lose Aerith, you must be contaimented by the core, you must beat the main villian (not once but twice) Now you get some choices like breeding chocoboo and getting knights of the round but these are more side quests. The entire game focuses around that unbreaking railroad quest that you must do and you get zero chance to change it. Yet it is a role playing game in the purest sense of the word
Role playing is loosely defined as playing a role of a character. This usually (note the word usually) depicts making a character or playing a character, gaining levels,, skills and equipment either from monsters (in some games) or vendors/stores (in most games.) These characters can either be made by the player or for the player. But role playing says nothing about you creating your own story.
The majority of role playing games both are linear and predfined. and nearly all of them have some kind of story involved in them. Now the question is how linear are those stories. It's just one sect of the RPG game world that voids story in favor of just doing whatever the players want and thats sandbox. Which happens to be a small sect (yes it is, cause the amount of theme park games vastly outweighs the amount of sandbox game) within a small sect known as MMOs within the RPG feild.
Note: i'm not including table top as thats not part of the video game world which i feel is the part of the disccusion we are in, nor larping as thats in real life.
What you've defined is not actualy "Role-Playing". Many (but not all) classic computer RPG's have very little to do with "Role-Playing" ...any more then playing Madden Football has to do with "Role-Playing". They borrowed the term because they wanted, from a marketing perspective, something that gamers of the day could relate to understand that it was a fantasy based game in a setting familiar to those who played games like DnD.
"Role-Playing", in it's proper usage, does indeed involve active participation in the creation of a Story(s). In that sense it is very different from simple "acting" or "gaming" or going to see a movie. The closest things to it would probably be improv, or shared creative writing.
You can't really RP in an MMO. You can talk in character and you can even have weddings and all that stuff but you can't have adventures. I think that is the holy grail for MMOs, interactive group adventures where a real person is creating the content. Modern MMOs just aren't there and I don't see this happening for a long time. The technology isn't there either.
More on topic though, I don't see how having a story as involved as a Bioware MMORPG is needed. I enjoy it, it's fun and all and it does bring something new to the game but it doesn't make the game for me. It's going to take more than good VOs and interesting stories piled on top of a re-invented WoW to convince me that a game is worth playing for any length of time.
I'll probably play through one character on each side and explore the end-game a bit before I cancel and move on to something else.
Comments
Story is a MUST for me, now. I'm SO TIRED of textbox questing which has NO impact on my gameplay experience whatsoever other than to make it boring and stagnant.
I think it's the number 1 thing that mmos miss. They don't say hey your making a choice now. Instead you have to "pretend" like your changing your character when your reall not. Top reason I want to play SWTOR, Too bad I don't really have the money...
It's called ROLE PLAYING not pretending. Role playing implies you are creating your story, not being driven down a specific path with a few possible twists. The whole genre was about making your own story. Was ...
Story is necessary to build environment for you to role play in. Story that tells you exactly what your character is, or has become .. is not role playing.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Reading allows for imagination. I for one will miss it.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
VO story in a game makes it TONS more immersive. After TOR I probably won't play a game without it.
They spent ridiculous amounts of money on voice overs. My main issue with that, especially as it pertains to "changing the industry" is that it is not necessary. You say do it right or don't do it. I say don't do it because it is a waste of money that could be better allocated to first and formost an actual space combat system. It amazes me that Bioware / Lucas Arts and so many fans actually think voice over is more important than a mechanic like space in a star wars game. Swimming goes right along with that. I don't have a huge problem with Themepark aspects, but when a game completely strips everything that could even be considered sandbox .. it ceases to be an MMO for me and becomes an RPG with a chat box. Might as well play Starcraft (which i've never played btw). Day and Night cycles, Weather that isn't always on .. These are small things to say the least except for space .. but if you take all of the aspects of the game which couldn't be developed because of the cash spent on voice overs ... it concerns me. I want to like this game .. but it is taking themepark to a new level and ceasing to sound like an MMO.
How is voice over more innovative than a game that finally brings star wars / bioware quality space and otherwise vehicle combat to MMOs?
Innovating in one direction and completely dismantling the other 40% of what makes MMOs MMOs doesn't seem very innovative to me.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Actually role playing says nothing regarding you making your own story.
FF7 (i pick this for familarity) is a role playing game. But the backstory, the character, the story even the end result are all predefined for you the moment you put in the disk. There is no diverging from this path. You must get out of midgar, you must find Sephiroth you must lose Aerith, you must be contaimented by the core, you must beat the main villian (not once but twice) Now you get some choices like breeding chocoboo and getting knights of the round but these are more side quests. The entire game focuses around that unbreaking railroad quest that you must do and you get zero chance to change it. Yet it is a role playing game in the purest sense of the word
Role playing is loosely defined as playing a role of a character. This usually (note the word usually) depicts making a character or playing a character, gaining levels,, skills and equipment either from monsters (in some games) or vendors/stores (in most games.) These characters can either be made by the player or for the player. But role playing says nothing about you creating your own story.
The majority of role playing games both are linear and predfined. and nearly all of them have some kind of story involved in them. Now the question is how linear are those stories. It's just one sect of the RPG game world that voids story in favor of just doing whatever the players want and thats sandbox. Which happens to be a small sect (yes it is, cause the amount of theme park games vastly outweighs the amount of sandbox game) within a small sect known as MMOs within the RPG feild.
Note: i'm not including table top as thats not part of the video game world which i feel is the part of the disccusion we are in, nor larping as thats in real life.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
I believe my use of "sandbox" and "themepark" is inline with commonly accepted usage of the terms. They are 2 extremes on a scale...."sandbox" being the end that allows players the ability to alter/interact with the environment in a less restricted fashion and "themepark" being the end which places severe limts on how the player can interact/alter the game environment.
You're setting up a bit of a strawman arguement, IMO, by contending that in order to qualify as "sandbox" a game has to allow the player to do virtualy anything. If we were to use that same standard for "themepark" then no game in existance really would qualify as a true themepark either...since players would not be able to do anything.... including talk to other players, sell/trade/craft items, or even temporarly kill mobs that are seen by other players...or even press buttons to control thier own characters actions in combat.
In practicality all games are going to fall somewhere in between those 2 extremes on the scale. It's really which end of the scale they tend to favor that will determine if most people consider them as "sandbox" or "themepark."
As a matter of fact, I would consider the dialogue options for characters in TOR as a more "sandbox" element then most MMO's impliment for player dialogue with NPC's. The only factor that largely negates the "sandbox" influence is the fact such choices only alters the game environment FOR THAT CHARACTER, not for the rest of the games population.
That's one of the big differences between the implimentation of that style mechanic in a SPRPG and a MMORPG. In a BIOWARE SPRPG, if the player decides to kill Flemeth (for example)....Flemeth will be dead in the games reality....she will no longer effect the game world. In a BIOWARE MMORPG, Flemeth is only dead for the players that kill her, for others she is alive. They create an alternate, private version of reality for each player.
A more sandbox approach would be to have one unified reality for all players where Flemeth was either dead or alive for ALL players depending upon whether anyone killed her or not. That's how alot of the old school MUDS used to handle thier story lines. It's doable, it just means that the tools for creating/running story arcs have to be efficient enough that if you allow the players to kill off an NPC, they aren't sitting around waiting with nothing interesting to do for 2 years while you build the next NPC/Story Arc. Which is the real problem MMO's have had to date.... they've invested a ton of resources in building fancy graphics engines, high frame rates, smoke, lighting, cutscenes, voice acting, etc.....
But have invested relatively little in tools for quickly and easly creating content and altering the game environment in ways that won't break the game environment. Not that such things are neccesarly easy to do, but neither are alot of the things they've achieved with graphical performance of the engine. It's all a matter of where they choose to put thier investment dollars in technology.
It's the difference between simply READING a story and participating in the WRITING a story. Both are enjoyable activities in thier own way, but they ARE very different in nature.
Alot of us are looking for a game experience that allows us to play a more active creative role in putting together the story of our characters and the game world at large. Something that harkens back to the gaming experience of PnP RPG's or perhaps text based MUDS/MUSH's.... where the players played an active role in shaping the story and the events that took place in the game world.
The key factor is that while Bioware is presenting us a story....it's not all that much different then the way a movie or novel presents a story. We get to experience SOME ONE elses story... NOT our own. That's not a bad thing, but it's qualitatively a very different experience from something that some-one who really wants to ROLE-PLAY is looking for.
The other critical difference is that ROLE-PLAY (the kind most of us are looking for) is a SHARED creative experience....it's not a monologue, it's a dialogue...where you are weaving the story that you are creating for your character in and around the stories that the other players and the GM are creating.
That's a qualitatively different approach then Bioware is taking with TOR and thier personal story arc's. Thier approach has each character in their own seperate individual version of reality. In my personal story arc, Bubba the Hut may be dead because I chose to kill him...in yours he may be alive because you chose to spare him. So when we try to GET TOGETHER and create a shared story arc that involves Bubba the Hut, we have a logical stumbling block that we have to overcome....since he's dead in my reality and alive in yours...and someones reality (story) is going to have to be invalidated if we ever want to do anything that might involve his status.
What you've defined is not actualy "Role-Playing". Many (but not all) classic computer RPG's have very little to do with "Role-Playing" ...any more then playing Madden Football has to do with "Role-Playing". They borrowed the term because they wanted, from a marketing perspective, something that gamers of the day could relate to understand that it was a fantasy based game in a setting familiar to those who played games like DnD.
"Role-Playing", in it's proper usage, does indeed involve active participation in the creation of a Story(s). In that sense it is very different from simple "acting" or "gaming" or going to see a movie. The closest things to it would probably be improv, or shared creative writing.
Enjoyed the article.
You can't really RP in an MMO. You can talk in character and you can even have weddings and all that stuff but you can't have adventures. I think that is the holy grail for MMOs, interactive group adventures where a real person is creating the content. Modern MMOs just aren't there and I don't see this happening for a long time. The technology isn't there either.
More on topic though, I don't see how having a story as involved as a Bioware MMORPG is needed. I enjoy it, it's fun and all and it does bring something new to the game but it doesn't make the game for me. It's going to take more than good VOs and interesting stories piled on top of a re-invented WoW to convince me that a game is worth playing for any length of time.
I'll probably play through one character on each side and explore the end-game a bit before I cancel and move on to something else.