Star Wars: The Old Republic
Only about a month to go until the release of this game and I'm quite excited. Which is funny, considering that it's been in the gaming news for ages and I wasn't interested at all for the longest time. Basically there were three reasons for this:
1. I was playing WoW and it was keeping me busy enough that I didn't really feel the urge to play another MMO. I'm not really someone for polygame-y. (Pun!)
2. While I like Star Wars well enough, the idea of an MMO about it, or a sci-fi MMO in general, simply didn't hold that much appeal to me. I like the sci-fi genre in general, but unlike fantasy it's never filled me with any desire to imagine myself adventuring in such a setting.
3. More specifically, the way Bioware advertised the game's intended focus on story initially also served more as a deterrence than a lure to me. WoW's been focusing on story more heavily in the past two expansions and in practice this has translated into watching the writers' pet NPCs strut around and do important stuff while the player leans back and watches clunky cut scenes. Not what I play this kind of game for at all.
However, things have really changed in the last couple of months. I already mentioned that I was losing interest in WoW months ago and it continues to decline slowly. At the moment my rated battleground team is still keeping me glued to the game at least twice a week, but the rest of the time I'm feeling increasingly meh about the whole thing. Graham also finally cancelled his sub the other month, and I've been missing our ability to play together. A new game might work for that.
Then I stumbled across a video that showed some simple SWTOR gameplay and realised that what Bioware meant by story was not the same as Blizzard's vision at all. It was kind of like a multiplayer Dragon Age, in fact. Awesome! As cherry on top I then heard that Ben and Pittsy both want to pick it up too, both of whom quit WoW ages ago. Playing with friends again, yay!
Yesterday Bioware finally dropped the NDA about the game so I've been reading a lot of first hand impressions from beta testers. Most conveniently, nothing that they criticised about the game has sounded really off-putting to me so far. About the worst thing I read was that the female running animation looks slightly weird, which is one of those small things that have the potential to be really annoying in the long run, but it remains to be seen how bad it really is. All the good stuff on the other hand sounds really exciting.
Both Graham and I are quite hyped up for this now. (Oh, and of course it helps that I'm buying him a new PC for Christmas to enhance his play experience. ;))
1. I was playing WoW and it was keeping me busy enough that I didn't really feel the urge to play another MMO. I'm not really someone for polygame-y. (Pun!)
2. While I like Star Wars well enough, the idea of an MMO about it, or a sci-fi MMO in general, simply didn't hold that much appeal to me. I like the sci-fi genre in general, but unlike fantasy it's never filled me with any desire to imagine myself adventuring in such a setting.
3. More specifically, the way Bioware advertised the game's intended focus on story initially also served more as a deterrence than a lure to me. WoW's been focusing on story more heavily in the past two expansions and in practice this has translated into watching the writers' pet NPCs strut around and do important stuff while the player leans back and watches clunky cut scenes. Not what I play this kind of game for at all.
However, things have really changed in the last couple of months. I already mentioned that I was losing interest in WoW months ago and it continues to decline slowly. At the moment my rated battleground team is still keeping me glued to the game at least twice a week, but the rest of the time I'm feeling increasingly meh about the whole thing. Graham also finally cancelled his sub the other month, and I've been missing our ability to play together. A new game might work for that.
Then I stumbled across a video that showed some simple SWTOR gameplay and realised that what Bioware meant by story was not the same as Blizzard's vision at all. It was kind of like a multiplayer Dragon Age, in fact. Awesome! As cherry on top I then heard that Ben and Pittsy both want to pick it up too, both of whom quit WoW ages ago. Playing with friends again, yay!
Yesterday Bioware finally dropped the NDA about the game so I've been reading a lot of first hand impressions from beta testers. Most conveniently, nothing that they criticised about the game has sounded really off-putting to me so far. About the worst thing I read was that the female running animation looks slightly weird, which is one of those small things that have the potential to be really annoying in the long run, but it remains to be seen how bad it really is. All the good stuff on the other hand sounds really exciting.
Both Graham and I are quite hyped up for this now. (Oh, and of course it helps that I'm buying him a new PC for Christmas to enhance his play experience. ;))