As such this post isn't about SWTOR, it's mostly not even about MMOs. It's just about what one of the biggest events for gaming had on display this year. And my wholly personal take on things.
I'll split this into two parts. The first looking at the five main press conferences and the second part looking at a number of the games. Catch it all after the break.
Carefully the young woman makes her way into the cave. She is supposed to meet up with some friends to learn the fate of her long lost parents. But the lure of adventure is too strong and that cave-mouth beckons to be explored. Her past can wait a bit longer.
In the distance looms an imposing figure, a giant who clearly has made the cave his home. Careful not to draw his attention she works her way around him, trying to keep from stepping on any of the grubs scrawling across the floor. More used to being the center of attention than to slinking through the shadows her efforts are in vain and soon she notices him staring at her with a bemused smile. Thankfully for her he turns out to be friendly and he introduces himself as Gort. But no sooner had they exchanged pleasantries or in marches a band of ettins appearing set on violence. This looks like trouble...
Last weekend was the first public Guild Wars 2 beta. It wasn't open as such and it wasn't the first beta weekend the game had, but it was the first time that those who had pre-purchased the game could join. So it was the first time that people other than those selected by ArenaNet could experience the game in comfort. And with Guild Wars 2 being consistently one of the, if not the, most anticipated MMOs in development this was a big deal.
Having spent those two days experiencing the game myself I thought that it might be interesting to write up some of my experiences and views of the game.
This article wasn't that easy to write. You see, I've fallen a bit in love with Guild Wars 2. That makes it very hard to remain objective. And it makes it hard to shut up about it, leading to a very long article. Still, I tried. But the first draft not only turned out to be massively long (probably two or three times the length it is now), I also realized that what I was doing was explaining how the game worked much more than what I thought of it. Since my opinion is the whole point, and there are already plenty of places to learn how the game works, I decided to scrap most everything and start fresh, focusing on my opinions and experiences. The resulting article is still very long (I'm not one known for brevity anyway), but hopefully more easily digestible.
Read on after the break for my preview based on the beta weekend.
I'll divide the list into four rough categories: "Past Releases" for MMOs that have been released since the previous blog post, "Near Future Releases" with those MMOs I expect to launch sometime in 2012 (though note that only about half the MMOs I expected to launch in 2011 actually did), "Distant Future Releases" for MMOs I expect to launch much later (2013 and on) and "Off the Radar" for MMOs I haven't heard anything about since my previous post (and might never be released) or which seem to be canceled. And just as before this isn't meant to be an exhaustive list (though I do think I've got most of the more important ones). And the information too won't be exhaustive as it's pretty much tied to my interest in a title; sometimes a title might have a fair bit of information out on it but since I've got little interest in it I haven't much to say about it.
Even so it took a good while to put this all together. I started writing well before The Old Republic was even released and thus had to regularly update the text with new information and changes. Hopefully everything is now as accurate as I can make it and hopefully you'll find the post informative. Read on after the break for the list.
In the end I made a deal with myself: I allowed myself to play the origin planets (except Hutta) and not any of the other planets (except Dromund Kaas). I didn't want to play Hutta because Imperial Agent will be (one of) my (two) main characters (the other one being Jedi Consular) and I didn't want to spoil the story (any more than I already did at the London Fan Day months ago). And since all the other planets are shared I didn't want to play those either... though I allowed myself Dromund Kaas so that I could see how things were after the starter planets and get to my ship (and thus experience some space combat). Since by the time I decided on this self-imposed rule I'd already played a Consular to level 10 playing Tython again wouldn't be an issue.
As such I played every Republic class up to level 10 (and the Consular three times), both Sith classes to level 16 and a Bounty Hunter to level 20. The Bounty Hunter was a special case where I avoided all side quests (though I did do all side quests on Dromund Kaas again just to bridge the level gap some) and managed to finish the class story on two planets after Dromund Kaas. I tried to do similar with the Sith Inquisitor after Dromund Kaas, but half-way through Balmorra ran into a level 20 elite (while I was still level 16) that I couldn't defeat.
Read on after the break for my experiences in the game.
As I noted in the previous blog I was a bit dazed during the event, in the I-can't-believe-that-I'm-playing-The-Old-Republic-OMG-that's-Daniel-Erickson-watching-over-my-shoulder sense. As such I completely forgot to take pictures (though we weren't allowed to photograph the screen anyway) and though naturally an introvert wasn't particularly communicative with the developers walking around (I completely forgot to thank them properly). As a friend told me afterwards, I make a particularly lousy reporter. Even so I'll do my best to give an accounting of my experiences.
I happen to work about a ten-minute walk away from where the event was held, so after work I casually strolled towards Piccadilly Circus and still arrived early. But I'd counted on that as it gave me some time to have some fast food for dinner. Though the fast food was a lot faster than I anticipated (and not really that tasty) so I was still ready twenty minutes early. I knew that Gamerbase was inside the HMV store, so I went into the store to browse movies to pass the time. Doing so I noticed a door leading to Gamerbase, which was closed. I expected it to open later though.
There was already a line of people waiting to get in and I joined the queue, patiently waiting as well. Only it turned out that was the queue of people who had already checked in. Once I figured that out (thanks to Mr. Stephen Reid helpfully asking if anyone else needed to check in) I approached, showed my invite and passport (no I didn't fly all the way from The Netherlands as I live in London) and joined the queue again. At 7pm sharp (we were asked to arrive 15 minutes early) they let us in, leading us through a space-y looking hallway to, surprise, Mr. Daniel Erickson at the end of the hall (the red wall in the picture). I shook his hand and, where most people turned right, I turned left to find a computer to sit behind. I didn't realize at that point that right meant Republic and left meant Empire, but that didn't matter that much to me.
Read on after the break for an account of my play experience.
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