Can BioWare Put the RPG Back in MMORPG?

You can't help but wonder whether BioWare's upcoming MMOG, Star Wars
The Old Republic, will be able to port the same roleplaying aspect their successful single player games are known for to a new platform. It is a question Mattlow ponders in his latest editorial.

[EpsilonTeam]

Oh god i miss Bioware of the past. All we need is a Baldur's Gate online from them.

I really miss the old days. Gems like "Lands of Lore" from Westwood and "Stonekeep" from Interplay wont be coming anymore.

[Slinkey]

I agree with you on the Baldur's Gate online but I dont think bioware would get the ok from ea to do a niche mmo from my forefathers days :P. But I do think that bioware can rejuvenate the mmo genre by making the mmorpg more about the story then the loot and where better then the star wars universe is there to have a great story take place :D!

[Tony P]

I am totally jaded on MMOs so I have very little optimism.

Immersion is a key factor in my RPGing. But in MMOs at least 70% of the population is trying to break it. More likely they don't care. The bad players are doing stupid player tricks; the average players are bored to tears collecting boar heads and feathers and all that BS; and the good players treat the game like a damn spreadsheet.

I'm not saying people have to do D&D "ye gods! forsooth!", but it helps to have people treat it more like an experience and less like Facebook.

And if it's unclear, I'm saying I don't think BioWare can overcome any of that.

[evrfighter]

Wow impressive. I most certainly would have never imagined that I'd see such a precise breakdown of mmo gamers in such a small paragraph.

what's really impressive is that I would have never imagined I would have found it in the comments of an n4g article.

[SaiyanFury]

Tony P gets it right. I don't like MORGs, as I call them for short (Massively-played Online Role-playing Games). They all pretty much have the same formula; level up in an area, collect whatever items to sell to NPCs in an area, collect money, get better equipment, and move onto the next area and do the same thing. Personally, I find them boring. That's just a personal opinion. If a person likes MORGs, then more power to them. MMOs have very little immersion and are more about action than anything else.

[DARK WITNESS]

after bioware's last effort, it will prob end up a TPS...

[DarkBlood]

was the past kotor games not sort of tps *ish* in the first place? I mean one would think its already like that if you can use guns beside lightsabre.

[DarkBlood]

judging by the pictures from past articles it doesnt seem too graphically good not that i'm complaining or anything. I can sigh a relief that my computer in its current state should handle this ok.

hopfully when the warranty wears off i can just changes parts in this computer rather then build a whole new one from the ground up since im kind of a newbie at rigs, at least the structure will have already been done so making the rest alot easy to build and cheap too lol.

[JeepGamer]

If there's one thing that annoys me it's when an MMO has a big quest event that you mean nothing to in the grand scheme of things.

WoW had a perfect example of this when, as an Alliance character, you went in to Under City with the two of the games major characters. One of them decides to be a jerk and the other doesn't.

You have no choice, no option, no 'well I think...', you either follow along behind the jerk or fail the quest.

[silvacrest]

i have hope that bioware will do a good job
their track record shows that this could be a contender to WOW

in a strange way average graphics are a blessing because people with old PC's can still play this so its availible to more gamers