SWTOR Money Making Status - The slow but easy way to 700.000 Credits

There are lots of ways to earn money in SWTOR. You can earn credits from doing your space missions or from running all your daily quests for example. These are both two sources of pretty decent income and will quickly line your pockets with space money. But what if you, like me, are kind of lazy and loathe the idea of wasting your game time on grinding out the same missions over and over?

Want to be rich like a Hutt? Got the energy level of one as well?
Fear not, there is hope for you still!

Being a veteran WoW player I have had more than my fill of daily questing. I can get behind the idea of having daily quests in a MMO. It's a way for the developers to ensure that the players will always feel they have something to do in the game, even when they've reached max level and completed all the normal quests.
However, it's also a way of creating content that will eventually suck out your will to live straight through your skull.
No matter how interesting a daily quest is (and the daily quests in SWTOR are not that interesting to begin with), the magic will be long gone by the time you're making your way through it for the 20th time that month.
So that's why I personally have forsaken the daily quests in my attempt to preserve my gaming sanity.

That's why I've taken a more comfortable route to earning my SWTOR money.
I've already shared with you how I got 100k at level 25, and I've also posted about making money on the GTN auction house and further elaborated on this practice in a later post.
Today I thought I'd share my own story about where I'm at now with earning credits and how I've been using a slightly less aggressive method of the one I've outlined in my previous posts.

I didn't really start to put any effort into squeezing the most out of the GTN until I was done with my Sith Inquisitor storyline. At that point I was level 49 and with little motivation to do more questing, I decided that it was time for me to dive into buying and selling on the auction house and see if that could earn me some space bucks.
My credit balance was a reasonable 637.000 credits at that time, which was the result of following the basic tips of only having gathering crew skills and not spending any money on the GTN as I was leveling.

Why Star Wars: The Old Republic is ultimately a disappointment

When Star Wars: The Old Republic came out it was probably the most hyped MMO since World of Warcraft.
A massively popular setting, coupled with a developer that is generally regarded as one of the best at creating compelling RPG experiences, helped set some very high expectations for SWTOR. I was certainly extremely excited to finally get a chance to pick up a lightsaber and carve my way through this latest entry in the MMORPG space.

And yet I find myself disappointed with the end result.

You would think that this should make for a pretty awesome video game

It's now been about one and a half months since I first stepped out of my arrival shuttle on Korriban as a Sith Inquisitor. During that time I have conspired and murdered my way through the ranks of the Sith hierarchy, I've made friends with such unlikely allies as a Force eating alien, a cocky pirate and a fallen Jedi apprentice. The galaxy has trembled before my meteoric rise to power and I've even had time to get me some sweet looking robes!

All in all it was a wild roller coaster ride all the way through my story.
Then my story ended and I found that there was no more track in place for my joyride and, with a sheepish expression that would make Wile E. Coyote proud, I was unceremoniously dumped into the harsh realities of infinite repetition of content.

4 Ways to make more money on the GTN in SWTOR

Making money in Star Wars: The Old Republic can be hard work. So you'll want all the help you can get to make credits as easily as possible in SWTOR so you can focus on the fun stuff like blasting people or slicing them into neat little cubes with your lightsaber.

I've previously written about the 4 steps I used to get 100k in SWTOR by level 25 and that's probably a good starting point if you've just come in fresh off the shuttle and need to make your first credits.

I've also talked about the 3 ways that you can make money off the GTN, which is the "auction house" system of SWTOR, and that's going to be my jumping off point for this post, so if you haven't already read this post then I recommend that you give it a quick read.

I'm going to take a little time and share a few pointers as to how you can improve "playing" the GTN. By "playing" I mean the act of buying and re-selling items from the GTN without adding value to the items.
In this post I'm only looking at crafting materials as these items are the easiest to "play" the GTN with.

I've used these steps for about a week, spending maybe 10-15 minutes every day, and so far my profit is about 400k credits.

Thanks to these tips I can now call myself a bona fide SWTOR credit millionaire

Here are my 4 basic tips to playing the GTN:

Sneak preview of what's coming in The Old Republic

BioWare released this short video Friday to let us in on what we can look forward to in SWTOR:

No huge surprises really and not much in terms of concrete information.

I guess the few new bits of data that we can take away is that guild banks will be the first new guild feature that we'll see and that this "Rise of the Rhakghoul" storyline is going to take place across two content patches.
Oh, and also UI customization which I'm sure a lot of people will be very happy about.

Personally I would have liked some more information about the legacy system aside from "we'll do stuff with it!".



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The Sith Journals - Part 2

My continued ramblings about my adventures in Star Wars: The Old Republic are now up over on MMOCrunch.com,

In this installment of "The Sith Journals" I get my hands on my very own starship

"The Sith Journals" are thoughts and musings that I have made about my experience of playing through SWTOR and are a little part review and opinions on the game and a very large part completely uninformative observations made by me.

In case you didn't catch the first part then you can also find that on MMOCrunch.com here.



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4 Tips to the Sith Empire in SWTOR

My work as a Sith Inquisitor has sent me across most of the planets in the galaxy of Star Wars: The Old Republic by now. It's been a great experience all in all I think, but I must say that there are some things in the world that boggles my mind.

No, it's not things like "where do Twi'lek's lekkus go when they wear a closed helmet?", or "how come I get my own interplanetary starship at level 18, but I can't buy a damn hovering scooter until I'm level 25?"

"Here's the key to your personal starship, sir. What? You want a scooter? Oh, you're gonna have to prove that you're a responsible adult before I can get you one of *those*."

Instead I've made some observations about the Sith Empire and some questionable decisions that they seem to have made and I've come up with 4 pieces of friendly advice for them:

How long does it take to empty out the four tombs that are *just adjacent* to the Sith Academy?!

Seriously guys, you've been on that planet for years and there are still priceless artifacts sitting in plain sight, literally a few minutes walk from the largest concentration of Sith scholars in the galaxy!

Now I know that it's nice to be able to give your budding apprentices a task, but wouldn't it be a lot better to just make a round and clean out the tombs and then place some trophies or something that you can ask the students to grab?

SWTOR forums - Revenge of the Fanboys

As I start working my way deeper into a MMO I will inevitably start visiting its forums to learn more about the game and pick up tips and advice from my fellow gamers.
Such is also the case with Star Wars: The Old Republic, and so I have recently started trawling through the SWTOR forums in order to squeeze a little more Force juice out of my lightsaber (ewww..).

Visiting forums on the internet is usually a dubious pleasure as they tend to be populated by around 20% normal human beings and 80% beings of pure satanical evil and stupidity.
But even with this classic 80/20 split in mind I still found myself riled by the level debate on the SWTOR forums, which frankly makes the patrons of the Mos Eisly cantina seem like a bunch of well mannered girl scouts (hell, even Mr. "oh-no-there-goes-my-arm" had the politeness to explain to Luke that he didn't like him before he attacked).

"Well, some of the side missions are a little boring, if only...OH GOD, MY FACE!"

The prime offender on the SWTOR forums seems to be a bad case of Fanboyism, a condition that is commonly seen in early MMO adopters and dedicated Star Wars fans.
This condition, commonly contracted through large amounts of social isolation and/or repeated blows to the head, renders the person completely unable to tolerate any sort of criticism leveled against his or hers object of love.
Indeed, even a slight questioning of the incredible awesomeness of their personal fetish is met with withering stares and guttural grunts of warning.

And so it is that the SWTOR forums are filled with people being absolutely demolished for attempting to question any part of the game.
It really matters very little how the original poster tries to frame his criticism, everything from the most politely and rationally presented argument to the most obvious piece of trolling flame bait gets treated with the same broadside of hate and denial from the raging fanboy community.

3 Steps to make money on SWTOR's bad auction house system

If you've played Star Wars: The Old Republic for more than 10 levels, then you've probably had some experience with SWTOR's version of auction houses, the Galactic Trade Network (GTN).
And if you've had the misfortune of using this particularly nasty brand of an excuse for a MMO trading house system, then you'll certainly also have realized that using the GTN is an exercise in frustration.

The design of the GTN makes it needlessly hard to find items quickly, because you need to select several subcategories before you're even allowed to search for a specific item. And there's no quick pasting of item names into the search bar either. All search terms have to be typed in manually, which makes the whole process incredibly tedious.

Why would you make this interface that way? Why! I demand you explain yourself, BioWare!

But perhaps there is a silver lining to this particularly unpleasant case of insidious Darkside UI design.

Since it takes a long time to find what you're looking for, it's hard for people to get a good overview of what is available on the GTN and what the market price is. The result of this seems to be that a lot of people simply dump their items in the GTN at the suggested default price that the game gives them.

The 3 biggest problems with storytelling in Star Wars: The Old Republic

BioWare has been pounding hard on the hype drum for the quality of the story in Star Wars: The Old Republic.
For the very first time we were going to be treated to a top quality narrative experience in a MMO. This was underlined by the way that BioWare proclaimed that making SWTOR was in many ways the same as making several sequels to the "Knight of the Old Republic" series, which was heavily story driven.

And indeed, after my experience with playing the Bounty Hunter class in the beta weekend in late November, I was very impressed with the way that story was integrated into SWTOR. I was propelled through a compelling narrative that saw me trying to make a name for myself as a infamous bounty hunter, and all the framing, cut scenes, voice acting and even missions design, really made me feel like I was playing through a Star Wars movie.

Fast forward to today, three weeks after I joined up for the full retail version of the game and created my Sith Inquisitor character.

I still feel that the basic story in SWTOR is a good one, but several critical problems have revealed themselves to me by now and I am unable to find the same enthusiasm for the storytelling mechanic as I did when I first jumped into the game.

Riding a speeder bike on Hoth is hard to ruin, no matter how badly you tell a story

Before I get into explaining my issues with how SWTOR does storytelling, let me start by clarifying that my issues are aimed at the class stories, which acts as the main thread that leads you through all the content in the game.
There are lots of other small stories that you come across as you travel from one planet to the next, but for the most part these are not nearly as interesting as your main story. They do the job well enough to provide an excuse for why you need to go right-click the blue glowing object, but as a whole they're a couple of notches lower in terms of quality from the class stories, and I'm pretty much okay with that.

With that out of the way let's look at the issues that I have with the storytelling in SWTOR:

1) Pacing

When you start out on your first planet the quests that advance your class story make up the significant majority of all your quests. You'll quickly start loading up on side quests, but generally you'll be advancing your main story very frequently.

As you get further and further up though the levels of the game, you'll find that the time between advancing the story quests becomes longer and longer. I'm still only at level 39, but I'm spending several hours on side quests exclusively before I get my next little bit of main story.

Old Republic personal play journal entry up on MMOCrunch

Just wanted to let you all know that I'll be doing a journal series over on MMOCrunch where I'll be sharing my thoughts on Star Wars: The Old Republic.

The first entry is up now and details my adventure through the starting planet of Korriban, as my baby Sith Inquisitor took his first steps on the dusty planet and faced the hard challenges of trying to become a Sith Lord apprentice.

"Feel the burn!"

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3 Reasons you should play Star Wars: The Old Republic and 3 reasons why you shouldn't

After 32 levels and around 40 hours of playing Star Wars: The Old Republic it is of course too early to say anything definitive about the game, but I feel I can already share a few key findings with you that may help you make up your mind if this is a MMO for you or not.

I've narrowed down three factors that I think are pretty significant game design points and say a lot about what kind of game Star Wars: The Old Republic is.

3 Reasons to play Star Wars: The Old Republic:

1) This is the most well crafted MMO since World of Warcraft

Since World of Warcraft launched in November 2004 there have been many challengers, but they have all lacked the quality of polish that Blizzard puts into their products. There were many bugs and issues with WoW at launch, but the overall experience was incredibly smooth and well executed.

Many other MMO's provided some interesting ideas, but most of them felt like they had been taken out of the oven before they were done, or that whoever was making them simply forgot to add several important ingredients before it even got into the oven (I'm looking at you; Age of Conan and Warhammer Online).

In SWTOR I have found a game that really feels incredibly well crafted right out of the gate. I've only had a couple of disconnects in all my play time and only run into a single quest that was bugged. Now again, like WoW there are still plenty of bugs to be found, but overall you really get a sense that a ton of work and love was poured into the game, and that really helps establish an inviting gaming atmosphere.

2) The story is better than anything you've ever seen in an MMO

There has been story in other MMO's before SWTOR, but there has never been story like what you find in SWTOR in MMO's before. Obviously the class story lines are the main set pieces for SWTOR and that is where you'll find the most interesting stories.

I have genuinely found myself pushing for just a few extra hours just to see the next part of my class quest.
It wasn't the promise of loot, a cool new ability or the draw of a new shiny mount that made me keep playing until 3:30AM. It was the lure of seeing how my Sith Inquisitor would get out of the tight spot that he found himself in, and that is a kind of motivation that I have never experienced before in a MMO.

Besides an interesting side quest story, Alderaan is also incredibly pretty

But not only are the class stories quite good, there are also several interesting quest lines to pick up as non-class specific side quests on the worlds that you visit. I particularly enjoyed the Alderaan side story quest line that saw me help out the Empire aligned noble house in its attempts to claim the throne of Alderaan.

Commentated Alderaan PvP Video - I'll melt your face with lightning!

I've already dumped more hours into Star Wars: The Old Republic than probably any other game that I've played in 2011. I'm really enjoying the game so far, even if it can't quite match the addictive qualities of WoW (can anything really be expected to recapture that feeling again, though?).

Anyway, I thought I'd share with you my first experience of the PvP battleground system in Old Republic. So I give to you this video of me noobing around the Alderaan PvP battleground and trying to violently burn my republic enemies into a crisp, through the use of Force lightning.

I hope you'll excuse the slightly too loud sound effect volume in the video. I had some technical issues with the recording, but I hope you can still manage to hear most of my commentary.

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Is all fair in love and games marketing? - 3 nasty trends in games marketing

I'm sure that a lot of people have a distinct dislike for marketing people. A dislike that is only topped by their dislike for lawyers or having an ice pick wedged in their eye socket.
I myself have a fairly positive view on marketing workers and their trade in general. I understand the need to drive sales for a product and that this practice will sometimes create situations that can perhaps be a little obnoxious or a small hassle for me as a consumer.

But I must say that certain trends that I'm starting to see in video games marketing has made me question if we're starting to reach a point where the marketing decisions are starting to really hurt the games and the people that are going to play them?

Using highly advanced word alchemy, I have condensed my complaints into three main categories that I feel sum up fairly well, what my issues with the current game marketing situation is and why I think they are negatively impacting the games being made.

1) Preorder Bonuses

Getting a lot of preorders is great. Firstly, it's a lot of guaranteed revenue for your company that will come in as soon as you release your game, and secondly, it is also a great figure to brag about (if it's high) and show the world how great your game must be since so many people have already ordered it without it even being out yet.

One way of increasing the number of preorders that your game gets is by creating a "preorder bonus". Something in the game that will only be available to consumers that placed a preorder on the game.
If you look at it in a positive light it is the game company's way of saying thank you to the fans for preordering and believing in the game. If you take a more cynical view it is a way to sucker people into laying down a deposit for a game of unknown quality by promising them a slightly different looking gun/costume/hat etc.

Anyway, my gripe is not as much with the preorder bonuses themselves. I think that it's alright to reward your most dedicated fans a little. What I mind is the practice that is becoming more and more common, where every retailer has their own specific preorder bonus.
Want the silver machine gun? Preorder at Best Buy. Oh, you want the purple striped hand grenades? That's an Amazon preorder bonus.

This got completely out of hand with "Batman: Arkham City", which had so many different preorder bonus arrangements that there are entire dedicated web pages that explain where you need to go to get which preorder bonus!

So many... Batmen? Batmans?

Not only does this mean that some people that preorder may feel cheated when they discover that there was actually a much cooler preorder bonus at another retailer than the one they placed their order in. It also means that the people that care the most about getting all the content for your game will be unable to get it unless they place multiple preorders (now I'm sure some marketing people would actually like them to do just that, but I'd also like those same marketing people to spontaneously combust and go out in a massive fireball of aggregated greed and pure evil, but that's probably not gonna happen either).

Of course, you'll most likely be able to get your hands on all the preorder bonus content later...by buying it as paid downloadable content (DLC). That's right, kick those preordering fans right in the nutsack by taking away the one identifier they have of being dedicated fans.

4 tips to have 100.000 credits by level 25 in Star Wars: The Old Republic

Money makes the world go round, they say. This is true even a long time ago in a galaxy far far away in the game of Star Wars: The Old Republic, where money not only makes the world(s) go round, but will also enable you to go round the worlds faster, by buying yourself a ground vehicle as soon as you hit level 25.
Not to mention being able to expand your inventory holding capacity or just picking up a nice new piece of gear or mod from the auction house when you really need to.

So you'll want to get your hands on some credits in SWTOR and I'm gonna tell you how. At level 25 I had amassed just around 100k credits in game, and I had still bought every single skill available to me as I leveled up, and even expanded my inventory space twice (that's a total cost of 25k credits alone).
This meant that as soon as I got back to the Imperial fleet, I could go train the first speeder skill and buy my very first speeder, allowing me to ride in style and separate myself from those filthy filthy poor people that were still travelling using their feet.
How quaint!

My inventory (expanded twice) brimming with items to sell and my cash balance looking good

So tell us, oh rich one, how can we also amass these piles of currency and be part of that elusive 1%?
Well, I'll tell you. My tips are simple and straightforward, but judging by the amount of people that were complaining about lacking money for a speeder, they are not heeded by a lot of the player population.


1. Gathering skills are key

In SWTOR you're allowed to pick three crew skills, of which only one can be a crafting skill. But there's no rule that states that you *must* pick one crafting skill. Instead of going for two gathering skills and one crafting skill you should pick three gathering skills instead.

I suggest you pick Bioanalysis, Scavenging and Archaeology.
Why these three? Well, all these gathering skills are skills that you can use out in the play areas. You'll find nodes that can be gathered for all of these skills and for Bioanalysis and Scavenging you'll even be able to gather resources off some of your slain enemies. That means that you'll be able to get materials for 0 cost, so the sale of them is 100% profit straight into your pocket!

I've seen a lot of people advocating the advantages of Slicing, which is more aimed at straight up bringing in money directly, without the need for the middle step of having to sell an item to another player.
The big issue I see with Slicing is that it's not going to be corrected for inflation. That is, you'll always get X amounts of credits for a Slicing mission of a certain level, but the price of crafting material Y is going to increase as the economy gets going and players grow wealthier.

BioWare hints that they'll eventually add "Guild Capital Ships" to The Old Republic

I was just having a look over at the official SWTOR site and I found this page outlining the planned additional content that BioWare will be working on adding to the game.

It should come as no surprise that BioWare is going to be adding more flashpoints and operations into the game, nor that they are planning on bringing additional PvP content to the game. That's all pretty much standard MMO content patching stuff.

But what came as quite a nice surprise was this juicy piece of info: "Eventually we even want to deliver on the promise of the long hinted at “Guild Capital Ships”."

Hopefully your guild capital ship will be a little less... on fire and crashing through the atmosphere

Now admittedly for all practical intents and purposes a guild capital ship is probably not going to be a whole lot different from just a guild hall, but I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm enough of a Star Wars geek that the idea of having a Star Destroyer (Sorry, I mean a Sith Battlecruiser) as guilding housing is pretty damn cool.

BioWare, shut up and take my money!



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Overall impressions from "The Old Republic" beta weekend - Adopt, Adapt and Improve

I've already dipped into my experiences with the beta weekend for Star Wars: The Old Republic, firstly by touching on the space combat missions and secondly by describing how I enjoyed my time with the Bounty Hunter class.
Today I'm going to give my overall thoughts on how I found the game and tell you if my expectations are still the size of an Imperial Star Destroyer or if they've been slaughtered like Sand People by an angry Jedi.

First up let me give you a bit of background on how much time I had with the beta and what I used my time on. I got in a good 25 hours or so, and in that time I leveled a Bounty Hunter to level 17 and a Sith Inquisitor and Warrior both up to level 10. I also dabbled very briefly with a Jedi Knight, but only got up to level 4 before the lure of the Sith Empire overwhelmed me.
My travels took me through Nal Hutta and Korriban, and I also finished up Dromund Kaas with my Bounty Hunter and just got my feet wet on Balmorra. I also played through the "Black Talon" flashpoint, so I got a taste of the "dungeons".

The first stop in my SWTOR experience was the character creator. Compared to what World of Warcraft offers there is an incredible wealth of choice on offer. I do however have two significant gripes with character creation.
Firstly I am disappointed by the race selection that BioWare has decided on. You really only have human and "variations of humans with slightly different coloration". I do appreciate the inclusion of the Chiss, which I have always thought were a very cool race ever since I saw Grand Admiral Thrawn in "Tie Fighter", but Cyborgs are nothing but humans with a few bits of metal stuck to their face and Miraluka are just humans with a veil over their eyes... Really BioWare?!

Miralukans. They're like humans... BUT! No eyes! Mind = Blown!

There are so many other interesting races that they could have chosen. The old Star Wars MMO "Star Wars Galaxies" offered a much wider choice including Wookies, Trandoshans and Rodians. I don't know if BioWare simply thought that people did not want to play anything that looks more alien than a red human with some small horns on his head, but I am really disappointed that we're getting treated to these "Star Trek" aliens.
I also found that the "body type" selection is too extreme with the available options. You go from skinny short guy to super Schwarzenegger and then to big fatty Mcfat with no steps in between. The end result is that pretty much 90% of the male characters that I saw in the game were all using the pumped bodybuilder body type, which is a big shame. There needs to be a more "normal" body type available that is neither skinny nor steroid filled.

On to the game itself then. Every class starts the game with the classic "Star Wars crawl" that sets the scene for your situation and finishes off with a cutscene that shows your character arriving on the relevant starting planet. It's a great way to set the mood and feels appropriately Star Wars.
You'll immediately be thrown into a conversation with a story NPC and be introduced to the voiced conversations and the dialogue wheel. Pretty much throughout my beta testing time I found the quality of the voice work to be really good and the conversations were interesting to follow. I did encounter several instances though, where I would be talking to an alien character speaking in their native tongue and their spoken lines would take only a second or two even though the lines they were speaking were two or three complete sentences, which was a bit jarring.

Sith Inquisitor Character Progression Video

A new video is now up from BioWare which shows off the character progression of the Sith Inquisitor, which is going to be my class of choice when the early access starts for The Old Republic next week (at least if I don't change my mind at the last second and is lured over to the Bounty Hunter, which I loved playing during the beta weekend).

If I do go for the Inquisitor like I plan, then I will head down the road of the sorcerer, which focuses on all the lightning based ways of causing terminal discomfort in your enemies.



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You'll get to spank your Jawa a little earlier than anticipated - Old Republic early access starts on December 13

It seems BioWare has become overwhelmed by the spirit of the season and decided to give everyone eagerly anticipating getting their lightsaber on a little bit of an early Christmas gift.
The early access for Star Wars: The Old republic, which is available to anyone that has preordered the game, has been moved forwards from December 15 to December 13. So we now have two days less to get our affairs settled, before our free time is swallowed up like a hot Twi'lek dancer by a hungry Rancor.

Just look how happy Darth Malgus is at this news!

Of course the same rules that BioWare have already laid out for early access still applies. This means that BioWare is letting in early access people in waves, which are supposed to be based on when you placed your preorder. So people that preorder the game early will be let in first and then more and more players will gradually be let loose on the servers until everyone is playing.

The Old Republic Bounty Hunter Impressions - Jetpacks and wrist rockets make everything better

Earlier this week I gave you my opinion on the Space Combat Missions of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Now I'm back with more impressions from last weekend's beta test, this time I'm going to talk about my experience of playing the Bounty Hunter class that I played from level 1-17 and got to Balmorra, which was the third planet on my journey. Read on to find out how I liked my stint as a Boba Fett wannabe.
Unfortunately the screen capture feature is still disabled in SWTOR, so you're gonna have to make do with some stock Bounty Hunter screens.

I made a Rattataki Bounty Hunter like the one in this picture. The bald scalp is practical for those unfortunate flamethrower haywire moments

The Bounty Hunter is a ranged class that is all about blasting his enemies with various high tech gadgetry. You'll immediately be treated to the ability to fire a wrist mounted rocket, which explodes and knocks the target and anyone nearby to the ground. Perfect for giving you a little extra time to pepper them with some more blaster shots before they have a chance to fight back.

As you level up you'll be granted lots of interesting new ways with which to blast, blow up, incinerate, pummel or freeze your adversaries (no disintegration though... at least as far as I got). My favorite ability that I managed to get was probably the area of effect attack that lets the Bounty Hunter rise into the air using his jetpack and unleash a volley of rockets, which is a good way of giving a whole group of enemies a really bad start to their day.

Another favorite, if perhaps more for the looks than how much I actually found it useful, was the flamethrower ability that blasts out a cone of flame in front of you, handy for lighting large quantities of birthday candles or for melting faces.

The qualities of "Theme Park" and "Sand Box" MMO's

In the world of MMO's there are roughly two schools of thought that a game can be divided in; On the one hand we have the so called "Theme Park" MMO's that try to provide developer created content for players to engage with. These MMO's often take players by the hand and guide them through the game world, pointing out the important sights and generally trying to ensure that players always have a clear idea of what they should be doing.

World of Warcraft is the most famous and popular "Theme Park" type MMO of them all

On the other hand you have the "Sand Box" MMO's that are much more interested in giving players an open world for them to create their own gameplay in. Here there is often very little developer created content beyond the actual game world and basic mechanics and enemies. The point of these games is that players are truly the masters of their own destiny, able to create the experience that they want.

I wrote an article about these two types of MMO's and their strengths and weaknesses over on MMOCrunch and I encourage you to go check it out.

It's a design dilemma that I think has become very relevant with the impending release of Star Wars: The Old Republic. That game is very clearly in the "Theme Park" category of MMO's, with an extensive main class storyline that drives players forward through the game world.
It will be interesting to see how SWTOR is going to handle the typical problems of "Theme Park" MMO's, particularly the issue of creating a compelling end game experience for the players.



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