I don't play MMO'S. I like to believe that they are by their very nature entirely evil and wicked, corrupting gamers so they could feed from their souls. I'm a single-player guy and proud of it. But, as I remember, there were two MMO's in the working that were supposed to be... different. And from what I've seen from TOR it seems to be very similar to Mass Effect, complete with dialogue wheel and party members... and I was just wondering, how does that work? How does that work in an MMO? In comparison, I haven't heard anything of Secret World and as I understand it has been out for 5 months already.

Check out youtube, there were videos explaining that in particular. As for success, TOR went f2p ten days ago and TSW sold quite poorly at the start. Here's an article about it, dating October 2.

I've already watched videos, that's how I know that it has a Mass Effect style dialogue wheel. I just wanted to know from somwbody with experience if TOR, with it being an MMO after all, gives a similar adrenaline-filled in-the-moment story experience like Mass Effect does. Does TOR really stake on that? And if it does, then does it work?

Haven't played the Old Republic myself, but watching a friend play for a bit it looked 100% like World of WarCraft with Knights of the Old Republic models and scenery. From what I saw it didn't feel like a story game at all.

I don't play MMOs, but I've seen people say they play or want to play Knights of the Old Republic for the story.

Wonder what that means for getting a conclusion to Dreamfall. :/

Funcom announced early November that Dreamfall Chapters is in pre-production. Tørnquist leads a separate studio called Red Thread Games inside of Funcom to handle it.

Well that's good news. :)

Played them both, so let me see if I can help here.

Most MMOs are structured around open areas that anyone can access. Skullfart the Viking stands atop a hill overlooking a meadow full of bunnies. He tells you to collect twelve bunny feet. You and whoever else can, at any time, take the quest and kill the bunnies. Players will be waiting for these bunnies to respawn so they can hit their quota.

TOR's side missions are like this. The storyline (class) missions take place in their own instance though, so it's just you and anyone you've brought in on your team. Because these sections are isolated, they get away with far more storytelling than you could normally. In the above, no one could kill Skullfart because then he wouldn't be there to give the quest to the next guy. In TOR, you absolutely can affect your little slice of the world.

In that sense, yes, the class missions are all unique and all on the level of Mass Effect or Knights of the Old Republic. There are reoccurring characters, plots, betrayals, your dialogue influences interactions and your actions are reflected in later class missions. I think it does meet the claim of "this is KOTOR 3-6."

Unfortunately, in between all that is a bunch of grindy MMO horseshit. You still have a character you have to level, the side missions are usually tedious kill or fetch quests, and the combat gets awfully repetitive. I gave up and took to watching YouTube videos were some saintly folks had strung together video captures of all the class mission cutscenes. All the plot, none of the padding to make a 40 hour experience.

Only played 3 days of Secret World (trial period) but it's similar. Their big difference is the investigation missions, which require you to sort through external clues (similar to In Memoriam). Lots of open villages with roaming monsters, and everyone doing their own quests.

I think both games are solid MMOs, and they're both fun in their own way. Even though I can't remember anything about them now, I was satisfied with what I saw of TOR's stories. My biggest issue was both were typical MMO time sinks, and felt obviously padded. I don't want to spend hours to make progress, or months buried in a single game.

Have you ever played a MMORPG? Because if you haven't, you're in for a surprise, control-wise: In short, the (apparently typical, from what I'm told) control interface in a MMORPG is the most insane, uncomfortable crap I've seen in my life.

I wanted to give The Secret World a chance, because Tornquist and whatnot, so I signed up for a beta of sorts a while ago. I couldn't stand more than 10 minutes of such abominable nonsense. How do people manage to bear with those controls is beyond me --let alone actually enjoying playing like that, to the point that something like WoW becomes, well, what WoW is today. And let's not even mention paying a f'ing monthly fee for the privilege, too.

I went and downloaded TOR since it was free to play. Here are my impressions.

It is a Bioware game. It's a very Bioware game, complete with full voice acting, romances and choices. And that's very attractive for an MMO to have.

I tried two classes and played it for about 3 days. The game is very similar to another Bioware game - Neverwinter Nights. The way the whole story and lesbian dwarf sex and drama and emotional storytelling business is worked out is identical to Neverwinter Nights. You have your story location where drama happens, you are sent out to kill things, then you come back and more story happens. Despite the full voice acting, drama and choices - it's not very fun to play

And since it is a MMO, you have to grind a lot, and for the free to play players the game works against them - you will get experience points far more slowly.

However I don't think I would like pay for this. NWN wasn't very fun. This isn't any fun either.

It's probably saner to just watch videos on youtube than to really play it. I think the storytelling is quite good and quite Bioware, but it's made a bit artificial due to the nature of the game. They also recycle a lot of elements from their previous games. Some quests and situations were pretty much like the situations in Mass Effect 2.

It's an interesting game because so much talent, effort and money went into it - but in the end everyone would have been happier with just Kotor 3.

For Kotor fans, Revan is still alive and then gets killed by the sith player character. I'm also disappointed somewhat that how mundane the Star Wars universe is in SWTOR. Kotor II: TSL was a very mystical game and it created an impression of the True Sith as something ancient ctulhu like evil that is waiting it's time to have revenge. But in this game these True Sith are just some guys with issues.

But I still kinda admire the game for actually trying to do a high-budget single-player Bioware RPG as an MMO.

Tying up loose ends from Kotor: Part I

Tying up loose ends from Kotor: Part II

The way it treats the characters from Kotor and Kotor 2... I guess it's okay. I guess I might be mad if I had held my breath in anticipation. But... could be far worse. Kotor 3, where you could decide and influence the destiny of these characters, would have still been better. For everyone.