Hype……trying not to buy into it…must remain jaded!
As Lyssi knows, I am quite excited about SWTOR coming out. Well today Bioware decided to showcase and give us more info on the companions.
Pluses
1.) They have more personality then before, more customization, and romance if you are into that junk. 😛
2.) They will level up and gain access to special companion only talents/abilities.
3.) Besides changing physical appearences you can change their armor as well now.
4.) A lot more complex and intelligent then WoW pets it appears.
Cons
1.) this an MMO, not a single player console RPG
2.) more complexity is not necessarily better
3.) this is an MMO not a solo game….
The link also has an interview with it, Bioware says the game is fully playable, start game to endgame, and they are just focusing on getting bugs out of the system….cause they want to deliver a polished game…I really hope they do, cause all the bugs in DA2 sucked, although ME2 did not have the same issues. The more I see SWTOR the more excited I am to play, however, it can still flop like many other MMOs.
P2P MMO’s are really going to raise the bar to stay viable, against giant WoW or even rival upstart Rift. Another thing against big AAA P2P MMO’s is the f2p model is really becoming more and more popular, and lets face it maybe the future of MMO’s. Look at the ressurgance in people playing games like AoC, EQ/EQ2, or LoTRO. And look at the plethora of F2P games like Atlantica Online, Guild Wars, Perfect World, and League of Legends.
If F2P going to be the furture of MMO’S? It really does seem that way. The people with the disposable income who appear to be the main audience of MMO’s now, may have been hardcore and playing for hours at a time. These people now have grown older, gotten jobs, married, kids etc, they maybe looking for something they can pickup and play and leave alone for an extended period of time. If this is the case the F2P model is the more attractive model, pay for more feature one may want and worry about a recurring fee. It seems as an audience gets older, the more casual it may become as a whole.
Hell even take WoW now…lots of more features that the casual base have cried for years…Transmog! With WoW being as old as it is, Blizzard will have to decide what they want to do with the game. They will want to add more things to keep more casual players resubbing, also they may also need to take a look at the possible conversion to a F2P model as it gets older and older. Lots of blogs and lots of forum posts show…omg wow is so boring etc etc etc, is such a grind…A prime indicator…for a break or quit.
(however, lets face it, no matter what skin a MMO has on…it’s all the same formula: kill ten rats, level up, kill more rats, get more loots, boom kill dragons, more loots, kill demons etc, get more loots. The good ol’ purple carrot trap is in place for MMOs whether we like it or not. People are inherantly greedy and want more for themselves or even their own virutal avatar. Not much can realy be done to change the MMO formula, hell even for gaming in general. It’s variations on the same grind.)
Orangeslice > Other Sodas 
I see no catgirls here
I atribute the rise in F2P to kids. Any kid with a ancient PC (6 or 8 years old) and an internet connection can play a wide variety of games without ever asking mommy or daddy for a creditcard number. They just want to be entertained and they don’t much care if the graphics are ‘out of date’. Their junk PC will not play high end graphics anyway. So this rising demographic is pumping up the numbers of F2P but they might not have any effect on WoW or higher end MMOs.
Wow grindy? Anyone who thinks that need to go back and play a final fantasy game. You get way more plot questing a new alt from 0 to 85 (if you read quest text) than you do an most single player games. And there is a crudload fewer ‘random encounters’.