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Space: The MMO frontier

April 26, 2010 by

Space. The deep black. The awful emptiness. The final frontier. The fringe. There are all kinds of names and monikers for what is beyond the atmosphere of Earth. For as long as humans have looked up towards the sky, people have created stories about space. From aboriginal tales of gods and demons coming from space, to writers like Jules Verne, to modern day screenwriters like George Lucas and James Cameron, people have looked to the sky and said ‘What if?’. Now, people who follow Star Wars: The Old Republic have a ‘What if?’ of their own. What if space is part of the game? Well, what if it is not? Would you play it without a space component at launch?

Think about it. Star Wars has the word ‘Star’ in it. It is not Planet Wars, or Ocean Wars, or Sky Wars. It is Star Wars. The very first scene of Episode IV, after the introduction writing, is of two starships, a small one and a huge one, fighting in space. To this day, I get a small thrill when I see the image of the imposing huge white bulk of an Imperator class Star Destroyer. Ok, ok, for those purists out there, an IMPERIAL class Star Destroyer. Whatever… The image of X-wing starfighters diving in to attack the first Death Star was one of the most iconic scenes ever made in a movie. So from the very beginning, the stories have included space. It was added on with the later movies, with the battles becoming more epic in scope. Love the prequels or hate them, the space battle images from Episode III, especially the battle of Coruscant, were epic.

Star Wars games likewise have been very focused on space. Everything from Empire Strikes Back for the SNES to The Force Unleashed has shown space as an integral part of the Star Wars story. But it hasn’t always been playable. Games such as the X-wing series, the Battlefront Series and the Empire at War Series have all shown what is possible in Star Wars. Even Lego Star Wars has space missions. But is it possible to do such a thing right in a MMO?

Take Star Wars Galaxies. The people in charge tried to make space a part of the game. To their credit, they delivered most of what they promised. It was flawed in a number of ways; it was shallow and more than a bit boring. Grind, grind, grind, do mission, grind, grind, grind. Lather, rinse, repeat. It got old after a while. I personally played space more than the ground side, because I was a huge fan of X-Wing Alliance and older titles. What can I say? I like blasting TIE fighters out of the sky.

There is a problem in a MMORPG however. There is more than one kind of person playing the game. From my own personal experience, people who like space games usually fall into two categories. There are those people who like to ‘see what is out there’. In effect, they are explorers. They are driven to seek out new life, new civilizations, to boldly go… Oops, wrong game. Essentially, they are there to see what is there. To explore, to find things, to visit strange places so they can talk about them. Or just to collect the badges, whichever comes first.

Then there are the people who like to blow stuff up. Come on, you can admit it. I know I do. We live to make things go boom, the bigger the better. There was nothing at all more satisfying that blowing up a Star Destroyer in the original X-Wing game with a Y-wing. Or taking on a rebel fleet with a single assault gunboat in TIE Fighter. Or watching the second Death Star blow up after flying the Millennium Falcon through its innards at full speed in X-Wing Alliance. Player versus Player or Player versus Environment, space simulators are just fun!

But as in all things, there is no free lunch. A MMO is a big undertaking, and this MMO is apparently larger than almost all the others ever made. According to Bioware, this game is larger than every single other game they have made put together! There is a lot of work that has to go into any MMO. Do we want a space component? Exploration or combat or both? Oh HECK YES! But what if it detracts from the rest of the game? What if, in making a space simulator of some kind, which is not an easy enterprise all on its own, parts of the rest of the game get neglected? This is what happened in SWG I believe. They focused so much on the space expansion that everything else went on the back burner, bug fixes, additional content, everything.

My personal feeling is this. Space is an integral part of what makes Star Wars special. The aliens, the cool locations, the evil bad guys, the not so nice good guys, all of these are important – but space is what really makes Star Wars. That was what I really missed when I started SWG. It was the only reason I stayed as long as I did, first the promise of the Jump to Lightspeed expansion, then when it came out. It had problems, yes, but it was space combat and I got to blow up TIE fighters! If the rest of the game hadn’t gone so belly up with the changes, I might still be playing it to this day.

So to answer my first questions: Space is important. At least some kind of nod to space is absolutely required by anything Star Wars related.  Knights of the Old Republic had the gun turret scenes. The Dark Forces and Jedi Knight series had multiple references to space even if you couldn’t do anything in space. Jedi Academy had a mission where you had to use turrets to defend against TIE fighter attack – it was cool, but it lacked something. Something that all of us Star Wars simulation freaks knew and loved: the freedom to fly in space. I am willing to bet that even if it is not available at launch, that somewhere later down the line, some kind of space content will become available. Because it is, in the end, Star Wars.

As for me? I will play the game even if it doesn’t have a space component at launch. If it does, you will not be able to drag me away from it with a tractor beam.

So what do you think? I am going to be… busy… Green Seven rolling in on some Imperials now… DIE YOU DOGS! *sounds of laserfire*

Filed Under: Community, Opinion Tagged With: , , ,

An Interview with a Poster: Setie

April 19, 2010 by

For this week’s piece I am interviewing a regular at the TOR forums.

She has been posting in the forums there since October of 2008, a month before I started. She has seen great acts of fan fiction and roleplaying come to pass, and also some not-so-great acts go belly up. She has been a frequent collaborator, conspirator and sneaky plot-writing helper of mine.

We don’t know her real name of course, and it is probably a good thing. She has all the subtlety of a boot to the head when she gets steamed. But we know her and we love her! Everyone give it up for the Darth Mama, Setie herself!

Edward: Hello Setie, I have a few questions for you today, if you don’t mind.

Setie: Oh no you evil fiend, whatever will I do… 😛

Edward: 😀 In general terms, Setie, what are you in real life?

Setie: I’m a homemaker with a 3 (almost 4) year-old and now a 2 month old.

Edward: O.o Wow… You are busy then. How long have you been doing RP and fanfiction in online forums?

Setie: RPing I’ve only been doing about a year or two in forum form.   Before that it was tabletop and LARPing.  So I had something of an idea of what I was doing.  Fanfiction writing I’ve been doing about ten years.

Edward: What got you started in writing fanfictions?

Setie: Fanfictions I was always coming up with.  I’d spot holes in the plots of games I’d play and then I’d just go, “Well this could happen…” The writing then spawned the RPing.  I use RP forums to sharpen the pen so to speak.  If I’m struggling with a character and just not understanding them, I can put them in an RP and slowly it’ll shed light on how the character works.

Edward: What drew you to TOR in the first place?

Setie: Besides the fact that KoTOR was awesome and I played it some 20 million times?  Or that I grew up watching the original triology and loved it so?  That prequel junk needs to die in a fire by the way.  Plainly put, it’s Star Wars.  Even better, it’s a wide open time of Star Wars where anything could happen and you had plenty of heroes and villains to boot.  The tales of such a time;  be they of mercs, Jedi, Sith, or folks in between, needed telling.

Edward: What do you think is the most rewarding thing in writing fan fictions?

Setie: Telling an awesome story.  If you’re in a role play that clicks with good people, posts will be flying and usually that’s a good thing.  Some of the stories written by people are just awesome to read.  You can tell they had a blast writing it usually too from how it’s done.

Edward: What do you think could be improved in fan fictions?

Setie: The attitudes of some people.  I’m not sure what it is but there are folks out there that seem to think of role playing as a game they must win.  They don’t understand the idea of telling a good story, they just want to be the alpha dog who is the biggest and baddest person.  Quite honestly I do not understand these types of players.  I personally love making weak and broken characters.  It leaves tons of room for growth then having some character that is perfect and can stop traffic with their bare hands.  Remember kids, being a badass does not mean never taking a hit, it means taking a hit and then getting back up.

Edward: What do you think is the best writing you have done?

Setie: Honestly, I don’t think any of my best is out there yet.  It’s all stuck in the novel I’m writing or trying to.  I have various really good spots of writing in various roleplays and fanfics but my best is reserved for the novel.

Edward: Good for you, do you plan on getting it published someday?

Setie: We’ll see. First things first.  I have to finish it.

Edward: Indeed. Well, this is a question some people are likely to ask. What kind of character will you play when TOR comes out?

Setie: All of them of course and likely multiples of them if what Bioware says is true.  I’m a story addict so I’d want to know all the different stories out here.

Edward: Why am I not surprised at that?

Setie: Because you know me and have seen my spectrum of characters, none of them are alike.

Edward: Is there anything you might want to say to New Zealanders or Australians who read this blog?

Setie: I want to visit there someday.

Edward: So do I. Well, thank you for your time.

Setie has posted a number of fanfics and roleplays on the SWTOR forums. She is a frequent and respected poster, both for her insights and her biting wit on occasion.

At the moment, she is working on several story lines, most having to do with her main character Setsuna Andal and the machinations that surround her. We will likely be seeing a lot of Miss Andal in the near future. Waiting in the shadows are some dark forces that wish her powers under their own control. Of course, there are other beings who wish to see Setsuna free from manipulation and will not take kindly to people trying to hurt her. The stage is set for a battle royal for the soul and sanity of a young woman, tune in at the SWTOR.com community to find out what happens.

Discuss on our forums

Filed Under: Community Tagged With: , , ,

A Third Element?

April 10, 2010 by

I don’t know about you, but when I first saw the title of ‘The Third Element’ I wondered if Bruce Willis was involved somehow. What can I say, I loved ‘The Fifth Element’. Korbin Dallas’ form of negotiation will always be my favorite scene in a movie. It was with a little bit of a pang I read that Bioware considered community to be the third element in a great game. Then I started nodding.

I got involved in MMOs back in 2003. Being a Star Wars fan, I had little choice in the matter. Star Wars Galaxies (SWG), was the way to go. I bought the game, rolled a Wookiee Teras Kasi Artist and started my journey into Star Wars. I played SWG for two years and I have to say that those two years were the most fun I have ever had in my time on a computer. Every day after school, I would log on and look for my friends to hunt Imperials, cause havoc or just sit in the cantina shooting the bull. It wasn’t the game that made my life so interesting – it was the communities. There were so many issues with the game: glitches, bugs, exploits, pathing, almost any problem a game can have was there. And it didn’t matter. To myself and a number of other people, the major draw to SWG was not the game itself, it was the people we played with.

SWG was my first incursion into online games. I had heard a lot of negative things about them, and frankly, I wasn’t sure I had the income to continue the subscription. I found the money after the first week. I was part of several guilds, my Wookiee being a bit of a wanderer. I am very much a solo player at heart, but there was something about the communities that drew me back.

Then came 2005, the year that will live in SWG infamy. I am not ashamed to say I cried when I logged in and my Wookiee TKM, master pistoleer was gone after the NGE. I had been on a trip, and logged out for a week. I came back and found nothing. Everything was gone, everything had changed. I had gone through so many iterations with him; he was almost a kind of family member. I went online, looking for my friends. Most were gone. A few were standing around the opening areas of the new game, and everyone was sad. SOE had decided we were not worth listening to or keeping, so we were gone. All of us. I think there were five of us that day, out of a guild of a hundred and six. We gave each other our farewells and I logged out and uninstalled the game. To this day I wonder what might have been. I tried the NGE with the free trial once in 2008 and had to shut my computer off. It just wasn’t the same, no sense of community.

I have looked for that sense of community in other MMOs. I tried World of Warcraft for a week before getting bored with the grindfest and the idiots on the server I was on. I played City of Heroes/City of Villains, and had a level 50 hero and villain, but the few groups I tried to stay with just disintegrated. No one was willing to invest the amount of time and effort in creating an online community for fear of what happened to SWG – having their long term work just vanish one day. Many veterans (survivors) of SWG were present and I caught up with a couple of old friends, but it just wasn’t the same. It wasn’t Star Wars, and it had no community.

The closest I have ever come since 2005 to that sense of community was in a game called Tabula Rasa. I heard about it while playing City of Heroes and was unsure. So I joined the open beta for it and was astounded. It had its problems, sure, but the people were a definite pull. I hadn’t felt such a strong sense of belonging to a community since SWG. Both the players and developers wanted it to work. Unfortunately, the publisher apparently did NOT want it to work, so after a year they canned it. Tabula Rasa had a strong story, incredible graphics and music, and one of the most dedicated player bases I had seen since SWG. I truly felt I was part of something big. And then they threw it away in the name of selling more micro transaction, free-to-play utterly boring MMOs that were only to be sold in Korea. Or it was back room politics, depending on who you talk to. But for a little while, just over  a year, I was part of a community again online, and it felt good.

And that is the main thing: humans are at heart, still herd animals. Just look on any highway on Earth sometime if you don’t believe that. Where are all the cars? Clustered together – it makes no sense from a safety standpoint, but instinctively humans seem to want to be close to one another. Humans need social interaction, be it face to face, over internet chat boards or in MMOs. We need to feel we are part of something. We need to belong. We need community.

According to Wikipedia: “In biological terms, a community is a group of interacting organisms (or different species) sharing an environment. In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks, and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness.”

In other words, we share with each other. Humans are social animals for the most part. Aberrant types exist in all species, and anti social behaviors are not uncommon, but for the most part, humans want to interact with each other. And online games provide that interaction. If you want just to blast things, online First Person Shooter (FPS) multiplayer is for you. It is far more challenging than facing artificial intelligence enemies for the most part. But for many of us, the main draw is the social aspect, the community aspect. So, we are drawn to MMOs.

Bioware has the reputation of being very good at what they do. They have created some of the greatest games I have played over the years. Mass Effect, Dragon Age: Origins, Neverwinter Nights, Baldur’s Gate, Knights of the Old Republic, the list goes on and on. They were all great games. But in all those games something was always lacking. Something was missing. Something powerful, something necessary, something that humans seem to need. A sense of belonging, a sense of community.

Bioware seems to understand that and be focusing on that aspect, and if so, I personally will be first in line to stand up and shout ‘TOR forever!”

Over to you, what do you want in a community online?

Filed Under: Community, Opinion Tagged With: , ,

Fan Fiction and Star Wars: The Old Republic

April 7, 2010 by

What is fan fiction? Ask five different people and you will likely get five different answers.

According to Wikipedia, “fan fiction (alternately referred to as fanfiction, fanfic, FF, or fic) is a broadly-defined term for fan labor regarding stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator”. I personally write fan fictions for SWTOR, because I have loved Star Wars since I was a small child. I saw Episode IV A New Hope from the back seat of my Dad’s car in 1977.

But a writer does not have to be a total Star Wars geek like myself to write good stories. The main thing that is required is a good story. I cannot count the number of stories I have read and thrown away because the story did not engage me. Just because a story has a thousand pages, does not make it a masterpiece. As Yoda so wisely said, ‘Size matters not’. Without substance, it doesn’t matter if you write ten thousand pages, it is still not a good story.

Just like making a film, a good story is complex. It needs a good plot, solid characters, epic action, intriguing twists, good dialogue, not too much or too little humor, and a hint of mystery, horror, or whatever else the writer wants to add. Without at least a good grounding in all of these, the reader will not be hooked. And that is the bottom line; you want the reader to enjoy what they read. In the case of a published author, they write so that so the reader will buy the book. In the case of fan fiction, it is a little murkier. What do the authors of such fictions seek?

It isn’t money, since for one thing, if authors start charging for fan fiction, they get into copyright infringement. If they don’t own the rights to the story, they have no right to sell it according to international law. Lucasfilm and LucasArts in particular have no sense of humor when people start doing things like that. Because the internet allows for anonymity, it makes it very difficult for people to say ‘This is my story’. Anyone else can come along and say ‘No, it is MY story’. Who is the actual author? Who knows. Is it bragging rights? I wrote more threads and posts online than you, so I am better? Again, who knows if that author cut and pasted from some other source. The internet is a wonderful resource and a horrible temptation. So much information is just sitting out there, virtually free (no pun). It has been said that most of the ideas have already been done. That almost all of the great masterpiece story ideas and plots have already been published by other people and to an extent that is true. But… If you take some of what someone else did, and modify it slightly, and add some of your own ideas, you can create something that seems fresh and new.

A case in point is Episode IV, A New Hope. There is nothing in the original Star Wars movie that had not been done before. The evil empire, the quirky companions who happen to have the key to defeat the evil empire, the captured princess, the evil villain in black, the hero from nowhere, the wise old man who becomes the hero’s mentor, a mystical energy force. All of these and more are known plot elements from stories that date back hundreds of years. George Lucas did not come up with the script for Star Wars by himself. He wove the elements together and added in a few touches that were distinctly his own. And in doing so, he created something amazing – a modern day myth. Love it or hate it, he created the world that we know as Star Wars, and it simply took off from there.

I have been writing SWTOR fan fiction since December of 2008. I’m afraid the story arc is a bit on the long side and not all of them are good. These threads recount a story of a trooper who is more than just a normal soldier, and his family who are anything but ordinary. I write because I have to. I have the bug. I can’t seem to not write. It is almost like an addiction, but instead of having to take things in, I have to put things out in writing.

I personally believe that the future of fiction will lie greatly in fan created works. For one thing, they are free. For another, a reader can read part of one and say ‘I don’t like this’ and go to something new. If you don’t like a book you bought in a bookstore, maybe you can get some credit at a used book store somewhere. BioWare in particular seems to have a good handle on story. It stands to reason, as they have created some of the greatest story-driven games I have ever played: Baldur’s Gate, Jade Empire, and Knights of the Old Republic to name three. I would be willing to bet that some of their writers are following the stories that are submitted as fan work on swtor.com. After all no-one, no matter how good or dedicated, can have great ideas 24/7.  If some of my work helps in the creation of an epic Star Wars title, I would be honored. For myself, they wouldn’t even need to give me credit. But then again, I am one of those strange Star Wars fanatics.

Over to you: what Star Wars fan fiction has inspired you?

(Editor: In regards to this post’s picture, yes, I know Splinter of the Mind’s Eye isn’t fan fiction. I love that book, so sue me)

Filed Under: Opinion Tagged With:
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