We chat things up a bit about E3, what that means for Blizzard and WoW, and our overall impressions of the MMO showing at the event.
Big News of the Week
Give me patch, or give me death! When will 4.2 hit? According to the End of Arena Season 9 Announcement it looks like the patch will be deployed on June 21st, with the new season starting the week after.
Wanna see a naked toon with the best weapons ever? We’ve got your back! Our friends over at MMO-Champion have done the work so you don’t have to, and extracted many if not all of the first wave of 4.2 based Firelands loot for all to see. Let’s talk about a few of the stronger showings.
Rumors & Scuttlebut
Let’s get Legendary all up in here, yo! We talk a bunch about some recent blizzard Q and A regarding tanks!
Why does blizzard hate E3? Year in and year out, we get pretty pumped for E3 to happen, and hear about the spread of new games that will be eating up our lives for the next couple of years. But we never see Blizzard at this event. Why? Blizzcon is THEIR E3? Not unlike Rockstar, they are “”bigger”" than this. They don’t need it.
Drop of the Week
Do not forget Dark Pippi! He has provided sooooo many great songs we’ve played here on the instance, and his star is on the rise! Give him your support and check out his website, songs and youtube offerings. Really talented guy!
Special thanks to our sponsors this week: Squarespace, Audible.com, Doghouse Systems, and Typefrag.com.
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I think what some of you are failing to realize is that Bioware didnt go out of their way to innovate MMOs and make TOR some genre-defining masterpiece. And it was never sold in that way. Story is their big thing here. And Turpster wants to just skip all of that. He just wants to mash his buttons and get to the endgame. Its that WoW-style way of just getting the quests and going. The thing is your choices won’t drastically change the world like Mass Effect but they will have changes. In a flashpoint(basically a dungeon), you decide whether the captain of a ship dies or not. And that actually matters in terms of the fate of the ship. I think people had too high expectations. This isnt going to be a pre-nge, SWG 2.0. Its more like modern MMOs, but with an emphasis on story. There’s a reason for doing things. And the tank/dps/healer combo actually looks different. If you watch the Taral V Devwalkthrough, you can see that its alot looser. If your a healer you can do damage too. Your not some priest just sitting around hitting your heals and watching health bars.
The problem with focusing on story in TOR is what they expect players to do once the story ends? If they’re really banking on people making an alt of every class to see a different class story, they’ll be sorely disappointed. I’m all for adding story to mmo’s, as I like it a lot in single player games. It takes a lot more time to make good story content than to make repetable content. You can make a hard raid or a pvp battleground, and people will spend months playing it. Alternatively you can spend a lot more time to make 8 different long questlines for each class, and people will play through maybe 1-2 of those once before whining for more content on the forums. It’s nearly impossible to make enough story content to keep people playing if you don’t make it repetable, especially when they insist on making so much class exclusive content.
As for the choices, there’s a huge limit on what changes you can let the players inflict on the world. The world still needs to be there for other players, so they can’t let any player make any significant permanent changes to the world. The choices you make in your story will change your personal story, but not the world. The flashpoint choices too are contained within that instanced enviroment. You can do the same flashpoint many times, so nothing you do at any time will have any effects outside. The only thing that changes is what happens in that particular instance that particular day. Maybe you fight a different enemy if you saved the captain, or get different loot. Whatever you choose, the world outside won’t change, and you can do the flashpoint again tomorrow to choose differently.
The story will carry the game for maybe 2-4 months for most people if it’s good. After that it’ll stand or fall based on how good it’s mmo gameplay is. Everything I’ve seen so far of the gameplay and the mmo elements has been underwhelming. I know what I’ll do once I’ve gone through the game on one or two characters, and it won’t involve continuing paying a subscription if the gameplay demos are any indication. Maybe it’s ok from a players perspective to have fun with the game for 3-4 months and then quit. Bioware and EA will be very disappointed if that’s all TOR is capable of though. I hope the game turns out to be good though, as the mmo genre could use a lot of fresh air. I don’t think TOR will be that game, though.
Scott/Dills/Turpster – With respect, I have just now deleted my subscription to The Instance after listening to it for years because I’ve grown really tired of hearing about your 25 year player cards. People don’t care and if they did I’m sure they don’t want to hear about it again, and again, and again, and again. I have a main gate silver pass for all the Disney parks on the planet and I don’t go rubbing into peoples noses every damn chance I get. It’s completely CRASS. And frankly, only slightly more crass that reading 5-star reviews from the iTunes store. It’s nice to thank people for their comments, good and bad, but to read them on the show, (and other Frogpants’ shows), is just really a weak exercise is self-aggrandizement that is completely unnecessary. “Hey look I’m great, and to prove it I’ll read a comment that says so. And if you don’t believe I’m great, I’ll be sure to read more comments like this next week!” It’s gotten really old. If I’m listening to the show, I know it’s good or I wouldn’t be listening to it! I sure has hell wouldn’t wait until the reading out of the 5-star reviews at the end if I hated it! Peace and thanks – I’m done.
@Steve Thanks for your comment. I respectfully disagree, but you’re entitled to it. We read the names of the 5 star reviews, not the comments themselves, and it’s to show appreciation, not to self-congratulate. Take care out there!
Rock Oun!
They’re not skipping out on raids or endgame pvp by adding that “4th pillar”. And honestly TOR looks to have more exciting combat than Rift or WoW. See I think if you get what the game’s actually trying to do, you’ll like it. If you go in expecting everything to be revolutionized and with these expectations that its going to change MMOs forever your going to be dissappointed.
Pingback: Weekly Podcast Roundup: June 6-12, 2011 | gQuit's WoWPress
Pingback: Weekly Podcast Roundup: June 6-12, 2011
Pingback: Forgotten Children | Blog | Weekly Podcast Roundup: June 6-12, 2011
Whats the song that plays during the break where you talk about your sponsors?
The new 4.2 Firelands drops on mmo-champion remind me of the old Merciless Gladiator gear somewhat and who didn’t love those Merciless sets back in the day!? Nice show as always guys!
How long have you been biting my real Azeroth Heroes bit 0_0
Never really listened to the podcast then heard that at the end.
@ Taylor “Whats the song that plays during the break where you talk about your sponsors?”
http://matthewoxley.com/2011/03/31/all-things-come-to-an-end/
@Nexiv Thank you!!!!