The MMO Curse

I was always a fan of Star Wars.

Not having been born in the United States, I didn't get to see the movies until the early 90s. When I did, it was in a crowded theater with no air conditioning in Bolivia. It was a bit blurry, probably pirated, with barely legible yellow subtitles that had been done at some part of the process and then re-recorded with a pretty huge loss in fidelity every time it happened. Given the environment, it is still surprising to me that the thing I remember the most about that day was becoming a Star Wars fan. I was glued to the screen. They were doing a morning, afternoon and evening show. I spent most of the time between movies raving to my friends about it. Or to the stranger nearby. Or the overworked courtesy counter lady. Anyone who would listen to 8 year old me and this amazing new universe I had just embraced as my favorite.

I went through the highs and lows that Star Wars fans have had to deal with, and then some. The Wookie special, the new movies, the spin-offs, the extended universe. Everything just got a little weirder with every iteration. And not only that, but being a gamer meant that there was a whole world of other products to sink my teeth into, with varied results. Rogue Squadron is still probably some of the most memorable gaming I did on my N64. The bizarre SNES side-scrollers I have less fond memories off. And when BioWare, who had already won me over with some of their now keystone RPGs, announced Knights of the Old Republic, I had one of my first nerdgasms.

While I don't want to get into the specifics about strengths and weaknesses of both the original and generally well received Knights of the Old Republic and the sadly unfinished swan song that was Knights of the Old Republic II, I think it's important to talk about where I stand on Star Wars as a franchise in gaming and otherwise. That's because I mean to talk about Star Wars: The Old Republic, and my bias seems an important thing to note.

I was a pre-order on Star Wars: The Old Republic before I saw a whole lot of it. It just checked all of the boxes I needed. A big publisher, a developer I knew could make solid content, a model I was familiar with  and the intellectual property to have me hooked on day 1. I was familiar enough with MMO launches when Star Wars: The Old Republic was announced to be aware of the issues I would run into. Server queues, day one patches, unbalanced content both in PvE and PvP, broken quests. This wasn't exclusive to it, and I saw it coming a mile away. I don't think it had a particularly messy launch, though day 1 forums for pretty much every MMO would have you believe it was Ragnarok and the Apocalypse rolled into one.

It was a solid game, but there was always that caveat. The entirety of its quality as a game was judged not just on the experience of a player through the solo content, but rather the sum of all its parts. The balance, variety and foresight in PvP. The structure of its economy. The ease of matchmaking. If something in an MMO had been done well up to the day Star Wars: The Old Republic launched, it was almost expected to be there. This is despite many innovations in gaming happening too late in the development cycle of most games to allow for shoving features in without it being incredibly apparent. But it was the dream team. The game development hat trick of a renowned developer making a game in their wheelhouse, a massive publisher funding the whole thing with a direct relationship with the in this case internal development team and a franchise that had a built in fan base. It could do what Star Trek Online couldn't, which was maintain a minimum paying user base to justify the project.

The problem lied in a few factors. They had an amazing first month with some of the fastest MMO sales to that day. 1 million copies in 3 days. But most of those sales expected an MMO, and BioWare made something a bit different. It used its story telling muscles to craft some of the best stories they've come up with, with the justification that MMOs need loads and loads of content. Which also presented the problem of not having the ability to tighten all that content to standard. Voice acting had to be reused for aliens, many scenes had to work with minimal scripting and custom animations, and even barely passable content had to be given the go ahead. It resulted in some amazing writing and well paced story telling being shoved into the money maker, an MMO model that demanded precision and innovation in a genre that is almost impossible to excel at without major losses along the way.

For all its flaws, it was a solid game. Perhaps their publisher just saw the writing on the wall. Subscription MMOs were becoming anomalies in an otherwise micro-transaction ruled world. Whatever the reason, BioWare not only had to try to sell an MMO, but a Free-To-Play MMO. A term which has always been a misnomer, in my eyes, for what should ostensibly be called Free-To-Try. But the reason behind this post lies in the biggest crime that has happened with this game, in my eyes. It is only ever seen as an MMO.

Even during launch with the huge masses of people everywhere, and months later when some servers had become ghost towns, I played largely by myself. I eventually joined a guild, and that was primarily for end-game content and crafting. Chat here and there, sure, but I didn't play Star Wars: The Old Republic like I played MMOs. I was playing it like a single player game with a social component. And I found myself sticking with it long after my friends were gone.

I feel as thought there is a great disservice done to both the game and the developer in this game being judged as merely 50-60 hours of MMO gaming. With 8 campaigns, many of which are outstanding (the Imperial Agent campaign in particular is a must play), a deep crafting system, dungeons, a companion system with sidequests (and a variety of companions for each of the 4 class archetypes), it was Knights of the Old Republic III-IX. That had been the plan all along. And I feel it's a bit of a curse. A game with a world the size of Skyrim, from the guys who wrote Mass Effect, in the Star Wars universe, and you could try it out for free. If it wasn't an MMO, that would make headlines. But because it is, you rarely hear anyone talking about it.

I have been playing Final Fantasy XIV in much the same way, with similar results. My friends who are obsessed with grinding out instances and power leveling through the game get bored. They leave. They bemoan MMOs until the next one gets them excited enough to repeat the cycle. And I feel like they've just cheated themselves out of playing a really amazing Final Fantasy game because they were too obsessed with the frills. I'd like to think it's all in the approach. It's not about lowering expectations, but tempering them. And if I'm skulking around with my Sith Marauder and I spot a Jedi, I'm going to do my best to put his head on a stick. And the knowledge that I just beat another human being is satisfying. But it's not my focus. It's not my reason to play the game, and I find myself able to enjoy a game which would otherwise probably be as frustrating and repetitive as some make it out to be.

This wasn't meant to be a post specifically about Star Wars (could have fooled me!), but rather this: I find that MMO is a shell that within it holds hundreds of hours by really talented developers to make a ton of content. Content that can be consumed differently than it seems people are predisposed to believe they should. And maybe after all that, Star Wars: The Old Republic isn't the game for you. But the next MMO could be. And if it's not, there may still be a really amazing game there to enjoy. It'd be a foolish thing indeed to miss it.