Mmorpg.com: Will there be meaningful ways for Guilds to get involved in PvP? Will guilds or groups of players be able to hold territory?

Emmanuel Lusinchi: I won’t say anything on that. Sounds fun!

Hey Folks,

First of all, let me say that I love this thread. It always makes me smile to see people really digging into the setting and thinking about how it works together. Star Wars has a fascinating universe that is almost fairy tale simple on the surface and endlessly complex underneath. There is room for exceptions to every rule and variations on every theme. But in the interest of time, I'll keep this post to the general. The rule, not the exception.

Sith are evil.

The Sith philosophy is evil and encourages evil in its participants. We can get into endless philosophical discussions about whether anything is actually evil or actually good but if we are speaking from our modern, western view on the concept of evil then the Sith clearly qualify. They are encouraged to put the personal over the group, power over compassion and to judge everything's worthiness to survive on its ability to fight for that survival. Mercy, sympathy, generosity, these are seen as weaknesses. Anger and rage are seen as strengths. These are not people most of us want to work with or have as neighbors.

That does not mean, however, that the Sith see themselves as evil.

In our own world, slavery as something that is inherently evil is something the majority of the world has agreed about only in the most recent centuries. Imperialism, expansion through conquest, the rights of the few to rule the many because of birthright - these are things that our world's cultures have accepted as the natural order for a far larger percentage of history than they have rejected them.

In the Star Wars universe, followers of the Sith philosophy genuinely believe that these things we deem evil, are actually in the best interests of a society. They look at the disorder, corruption and infighting of the Republic and they scoff. "What those people lack," an Imperial thinks, "is strong leadership."

It's important to remember that movements towards freedom normally come during the reign of weak, distracted, or greedy rulers who are not providing for their people. The Sith Empire has had 1000 years under an Emperor who rebuilt them from almost nothing, led them in conquest and glory against their neighbors, returned the Empire to power and then led them in revenge against the Republic. A Republic who had previously attempted to eliminate the Empire's entire existence because of their beliefs. If this was ancient Rome the vast majority of the people would throw the Emperor a victory parade, not ask for representational government.

It's equally important to remember that you don't have to believe in any of this to play on the Empire's side in The Old Republic. You can be the exception to the rule. You are merely making a choice to be someone who was born on that side of the fence. Or, in the case of the Bounty Hunter, someone who tends to work in that part of space. The light side Sith who works tirelessly to make his Empire a better place is a deeply compelling character. The pragmatic Agent who wants nothing more than to protect the millions non-Sith citizens from harm is equally interesting. The Bounty Hunter gets to be his own man and spit right in the face of anyone who he doesn't agree with. Being a good man in a bad place is one of the all time great role-playing options.

So when you roll a character on the Empire side you're going to hear the arguments about why the war is important. You're going to feel the anger of a people who were told they didn't have the right to exist and were chased out of known space. You're going to see the culture that created and maintains their hierarchy and strange form of order. And you're going to make a choice about how much or how little of it your character wants to believe. Then you're going to start making choices. That's when it gets hard.

Hope that helps!
Daniel

Lesson One
His first point was that although Blizzard were not experts in the genre -- in fact, the company had never shipped an MMO before -- Blizzard learned well from the genre's past. Essentially, Walton posited that taking a critical look at your genre rather than being a fan or having experience developing it is of utmost importance.


Lesson Two

According to Walton, another success of WOW was Blizzard's insistence on keeping system specs low. He railed against developers' addiction to high-powered gaming PCs -- asking the crowd how many replace their rigs every year, every two years, every three. He noted that regular people simply don't replace their boxes that often, and that "there's a lot more real humans than there are us."

As he'd asked for questions during the speech rather than after, someone piped up to ask if the fact that reviewers don't have time to fully appreciate an MMO means that concentrating on graphics -- implying that good press would result -- is the answer. Walton didn't think so.

"This is not about getting some more customers -- this is the opportunity to get lots more. Like 4-10x more. There is maybe one game a year that drives hardware sales... they get a lot of hype, but look at their numbers. How much do they sell?" He also expressed surprise that Blizzard did a Mac version of the game, seeming unsure if the ROI was there. On that front, no conclusions were drawn.

Lesson Three

"Quality counts." This one was interesting because it sounds so obvious, but as Walton pointed out, in the MMO world... it's not quite the case. "What was consistent about every MMO pre-WoW is that they were buggy as sh*t. They were rough. Even if they were fun, they were rough. They all launched with hundreds, if not thousands, of known bugs. Everyone basically ran out of money and launched their games."

He continued, "I think that quality was a true innovation on Blizzard's part. Nobody had done that before at that level of play. Because they did that, their game stood out night and day above everybody else's games. What's the biggest mistake? What everybody did without exception -- shoving it out the door." He admitted that he was guilty of doing the same thing in the past (we can thus infer that BioWare will not in the future.)

A audience member asked if publishers or venture capitalists new to MMOs would recognize the quality factor. Musing on the question, he talked about human nature: "We fool ourselves into doing things that we know are not right because of the current circumstances... human beings tend to think short-term... the future value of the MMO is immense if you don't blow the launch. [If you launch a bad game] you can look at something and go 'I flushed hundreds of millions.'

With "one chance to make a first impression", he posited, "the brand value of an MMO is created within the first week of launch. End of story. You're done the first week... I say a week, but it might even be a day." The implication was clear: get the moneymen on board with the quality equation or suffer. He offered this simple warning: "It's a post-World Of Warcraft world. You better do that."

Lesson Four

One thing that WoW is frequently recognized for is its solo play. Walton's fourth lesson was: support this, because gamers want it. According to Walton, older games that forced players into groups missed the point: "[the] truth is that people soloed every game to the best they could and when they couldn't anymore, they quit. Embracing solo play that was a true innovation for WoW."

It was pointed out that players who hit the level cap are pretty much forced to group in WOW; Walton still felt like the game "feels like it's a level playing field for all people at that level" and thus isn't quite as sinful as it could be. He offered a Blizzard quote on the solo issue -- "We look at soloing as our casual game." Given the weight of the phrase "casual game" in 2007, you can bet the audience was scribbling that one down.