I don’t think this is as true today, as I’ve seen plenty of more modern MMOs save gorgeous zones for higher levels.  I’m glad this has happened, because it doesn’t make leveling as painful for people like me who are heavily impacted by the “feel” of environments.  As I make my way up through the 40s in SWTOR, I’m equally grateful that BioWare has mixed up the beautiful, forbidding, and interesting in terms of zone design so that it’s not a straight progression from pretty to ugly (a reverse duckling?).  In fact, my character started out on one of the more gross places.  Looking back so far, I’d rate the beauty of each planet as such:

• Hutta: Fugly
• Dromund Kaas: Strangely pretty
• Balmorra: Ugly-ish and irritating
• Nar Shadda: Garish, but in a fun, different way (going to a much more urbanized planet)
• Tatooine: Pretty, loved the wide-open spaces
• Alderaan: Gorgeous
• Taris: Disheveled and ugly, cluttered
• Quesh: Felt like coming back to Hutta (fortunately it was a quick revisit)
• Hoth: Attractive if lacking in diversity
• Belsavis: Really pretty, nice juxtaposition of glaciers and tropical hotspots

Beyond subjective interpretations of planetary attractiveness, I’m just enjoying the concept of planets in SWTOR versus zones in most other MMOs.  I know, it’s mostly semantics, but it still feels different when you know that the other places aren’t crammed up against your current location, but a hyperjump or two away.  Star Wars lends itself well to the MMO zone design template, in which most zones adhere to a wide-reaching feature (the ice zone, the water zone, the hilly zone, the autumn zone, etc.).  After all, pretty much every planet we saw in the movies was dominated by a singular terrain type.

It’s hard to compare the size of SWTOR’s combined landmass with other MMOs, but from my perspective, it all seems really, really big.  There’s a lot of places for one to strike off and explore, if that fits your fancy, and the game always keeps you on the move.

Speaking of which, another pet peeve I’ve had in MMOs is that once you level past a zone, you’re done with it.  That always felt contrived and artificial, and I never liked it — why wouldn’t your character come back for other missions?  Happily, SWTOR has given me several reasons to return to previous planets, usually through the class storyline or via bonus missions (which, if you aren’t doing them, come highly recommended for XP, rewards and additional story).  I think bonus missions are set up in a way that get you off the planet earlier than the level curve would’ve demanded.  It breaks up the scenery, and for anyone who’s spent weeks or months in the same stinking zone, wishing desperately for escape, it’s a boon.

It’s also pretty cool to know that over on the Republic side are not only a couple unique planets that I’m not going to see this time around, but a few different versions of planets (like a lowbie Taris).  Of course, I hope that in the future there are more planetary paths to the level cap — or even multiple paths on the same planet — but for now I’m enjoying the tourist aspect of planet-hopping.

“Brother is playing Star Wars MMO on max volume, so the entire house heard him try to proposition his crewmember for sex and get shot down.”

~ via Gazimoff on Twitter

And so I did, and for the first part of it, it seemed pretty routine.  Space battle followed by ground combat (and, presumably, followed by more space battle).  But when I beamed onto the Cardassian ship, I could tell it was anything but routine.  The place was *trashed* and eerie for a lack of NPCs after the first couple waves of mobs.  When I went into the sick bay, I almost jumped out of my seat as the screen turned a frosty white while “ghosts” faded in and out, seeming to kill at random.  From then on, the mission was an investigatory one, trying to find out why all of these crew members had died and why these ghosts kept appearing and changing the room like that.

Completely unexpectedly, I was finding myself freaked out by an MMO of all things, and kind of charmed that this could actually happen.  The strange thing is that it wasn’t the only time it’s happened recently, either.

A couple weeks ago I was going through my class storyline in SWTOR when the screen started doing really insane, freaky things that had me backpedaling away from the computer.  Without spoiling anything, it was apparently supposed to be showing me that something was going wrong in my character’s head, but I really didn’t know how to take all of the weird images and sights — many of which were lightning-quick, so that I couldn’t get a read on it.  The end result is that for a moment, I found myself experiencing a shade of fear.  In an MMO.

MMOs aren’t supposed to be scary, because they almost never are.  For one thing, for every one person who likes scary stuff, you’re going to have a whole bunch that will be repulsed by it, so it probably isn’t a wise business practice for a game company trying to appeal to the masses.  For another, you as a character are the Swiss Army knife of killing machines, boasting dozens of ways to slaughter those you oppose.  So if something attacks you, you aren’t going “AIEEE!  A monster!  Oh mercy me!”, you’re going “How many hit points does it have and what’s its loot table look like?”  We’ve killed so many giant spiders in games that it’s just impossible to take their presence as anything other than a crawling cliche.

So the best avenue for genuine scares that MMO studios have is to create convincing environments that play more on the “freakout” factor.  It might be a one-trick pony that loses all scare factor the second time around, or a completely random event (like a mob jumping out of a shadow while you weren’t watching).  But anything freaky’s always been my weak spot for horror films, more than jump-scares or unstoppable killers or elaborate torture sequences.  If my brain processes it as just plain *wrong*, it’s going to play on my imagination for days to come.  Maybe that’s worth it once in a while in MMOs, especially if it evokes actual emotion that isn’t typically felt in the course of playing these games.

These two brief experiences makes me wonder about The Secret World’s horror angle.  It certainly looks like it has the recipe for some good freaky setups, with zombies and ghosts and c’thulu-like creatures and Indian burial grounds and whatnot, but the proof will be in the experience.  Will it be hard to ever be scared when you’re not truly alone (thanks, chat window!) and have enough firepower to level a small mountain at your disposal?

I’m hoping that TSW does contain a genuine horror edge to it.  Ragnar Tornquist’s two Longest Journey games had a few moments that weren’t exactly scary, but certainly evoked fear and dread within me.  Some of the mob art I’ve seen is unsettling enough to know that I probably won’t want to play TSW with the lights off at night.  I’ve heard the mobs mostly come at night.

Mostly.

1. The free-to-play model suits me perfectly

One of the reasons I never stuck with STO for longer than a month here or there is that it’s the type of game that I only want to play sporadically.  A couple times a week, maybe.  And a “couple times a week” is not a valid reason in my book for a monthly subscription, so that had to go.

But F2P?  That’s a winning ticket right there.  There’s no subscription pressure to play, and every time I’m looking for something different (ship combat still rocks), it’ll be there for me.

2. Its free-to-play setup is surprisingly generous

Here’s what shocked me about this return.  I really thought that Cryptic’s F2P version of STO would be painful at best to experience.  I haven’t been that glowing about how the company neutered Champions Online’s best feature — the freeform creation and growth of superheroes — when it was designing the version for free players.  So I anticipated something as bad or worse for STO.

In actuality, it’s about one of the most generous free models I’ve seen in an MMO.  Take a look at the features matrix and try to pinpoint where the game is “punishing” you for not being a subscriber.  Slightly smaller inventory and currency cap?  Ouch.  I’m going to be sore for days.

People who denounce F2P as being this great evil that’s corrupting our beloved MMOs from the inside-out don’t often acknowledge that there are many ways to do F2P, and while some are aggressively bad and harmful to the game, others are finding a great balance between giving a free experience while tempting players to pony up dough.  I’m not fond of STO’s gambling-like mystery prize boxes you can buy, but most everything else in the store is either cosmetic, a different fun ship design with minor advantages, or various services.  Yet there’s nothing that has to be purchased to enjoy the game to its fullest, either.

3. The leveling is faster

Every time I return to STO, I feel compelled to start a brand-new character (I really don’t know why).  So I’ve been through the first 20 levels or so of content several times now, and have never really liked how painfully slow the leveling process was.  I guess between the time I last played and now Cryptic tweaked the leveling curve so that you not only level quicker (I was to Lt. Cmdr. within two play sessions) but you can level primarily through the episodes alone.

4. Ground combat is less… slow

I never really disliked ground combat the way some people did, but I’m certainly not complaining that it goes a lot faster these days.  They’ve added the option to even play it in a pseudo-over-the-shoulder shooter setup, but after trying it, I’m sticking with the standard format.

5. It sates my desire for vehicular combat

My plate is full of MMOs where I’m inhabiting the body of some humanoid running around endlessly, so having one game where my main avatar is a ship is a refreshing change of pace.  STO’s space combat is tactical, eye-pleasing, and fairly easy to understand.  It just has a wonderfully different feel to it all, and I dig that.

6. The duty officer system is a fun diversion

Also new since last I played is the Duty Officer (“doff”) system.  I had no idea what this was before coming back to the game, but it turns out that it’s a variant on the time-based progression gameplay that’s popular in titles like FarmVille, Tiny Tower, and even Star Wars: The Old Republic’s crew missions.

Basically, you start off with a bunch of crew members that you can either (a) assign to duty to give you buffs in different areas or (b) send off on missions that will hopefully net you goodies.  Missions take time and can be stacked up in ridiculous amounts — I think I had 17 missions going on my second day of fiddling with this system.  There’s a bit of strategy involved with the system, as crew members’ traits can impact your mission’s chance of failure or success.  Fail badly, and your guy can be injured (taking him off the roster for a while) or even killed.  So it’s in  your best interest to minimize the odds of failure as best you can.

For someone who can’t always dump a lot of time into a game, knowing that I can log in for five minutes, send out my crew on missions, and know that I’m accomplishing something during the day is a heady feeling.

“People pride themselves on being cynical because they think it makes them street-smart and sharp-eyed, able to see the truth behind everyone’s bulls**t. If it’s a matter of being skeptical, and always thinking and asking questions, that’s not a bad thing.

A real wise person of the world keeps looking for all the angles — curse or Frogurt, cloud or silver lining. They look for all sides of the story instead of assuming there are only two.”

~ Cracked

Play a quick game today — read the aforementioned article and see how many of those items apply to the MMO community.  It’s fun!

And so this morning went, as ANet president Mike O’Brien announced that not only will the beta process for Guild Wars 2 be ramping up over the next three months, but that the game will most definitely launch this year.  If you’re partially deaf right now, it’s because of the pent-up cheers and excitement from fans that has escaped into the atmosphere.

It’s about time, really.  We’ve been lamenting the slow pace of GW2′s development for a while now — GuildCast’s Shawn Schuster noted that ArenaNet originally said that the beta for the game would happen in 2008.  Which, if you have a calendar handy, is practically an eon ago in game development time.

Along with SWTOR’s launch (last December), The Secret World (March), and TERA (May), 2012′s already looking to be much busier than any recent year on record in regards to new major MMOs.  The industry looks alive and eager to grow, and this could just be the year that changes a lot of things.

I’m excited because I honestly didn’t think GW2 was going to land in 2012 at all.  I’m thrilled because my gaming dance card is filling up not only with current titles but future ones as well, and having more options is usually a good thing.

Of course, now the speculation becomes “when in 2012?”  Due to the beta schedule O’Brien posted, we can reasonably surmise it’s not going to be before the end of April.  A May/June/early summer launch would be a great time to capture all those bored teens and college kids looking for something else to do, and ArenaNet could get a nice boost of publicity if it timed it close to E3.  If we don’t see it by then, historical MMO releases tend to gravitate to September or December, although all bets are off when it comes to this company.

For many, it’s just good enough to know that it’s coming, and that by Christmas we’ll be swapping GW2 stories and laughing about the days we were anxiously awaiting this beast.

For what it’s worth, that hasn’t happened in SWTOR.  My character, Yeti Yesterday, is her own person that’s been shaped by the course of the game’s events and the choices she’s made.  Instead of coming to the game with a fully fleshed-out biography, her story’s developed over time, which has allowed me to get to know her that much more.  And I’m not talking about the story that all Agents go through or all players experience (planet quests), but the small choices within those stories that have shaped her persona.

It’s a small but brilliant revelation for me to play a character and have her say or do something that isn’t necessarily what I would do, but that I know she would.  Because it’s who she is.  Maybe SWTOR is a great gateway tool to roleplaying, I don’t know, but I’m loving it.

As an example, I had one of the best nights yesterday in the game as I got to an important point in a storyline of betrayals and secrets (no specific spoilers here, don’t worry).  Now, Yeti has always been a nice person for an Imperial spy-slash-killing-machine.  Like Doctor Who, she will give a chance for redemption and mercy to those who will take it, and she cares about making a difference in a system that’s often brutal and oppressive.  She still gets the job done, of course, but how she does it is important to her (and me).

But after being betrayed and messed with so much, she snapped a bit.  She was unable to keep being the merciful Yeti I once knew, and started going after her betrayers with a vengeance.  It truly felt like the character had the reins of the game, not me, and I didn’t have a choice in the matter; I had to pick what she would do in this situation.  And it felt dizzyingly good and powerful to see her dance this line between the core of who she was and the awful situation she found herself in.  In a way, it felt like when I’m writing stories and my characters get away from me — where I’m not writing them the way I want, but I’m writing them the way they would act.  It’s a weird mental thing where the imagined object takes a life and will of its own.

I’m hoping Yeti can come back from the brink.  I can’t wait to play more of her to see what happens.  And for my money, I really hope that BioWare’s writing more chapters in each of the classes’ storylines so that her main narrative can continue.

“I think the general lack of patience in the player base has been the doom of MMOs in general, but at the same time, a dev team needs to build the level of trust that means players will roll with a bad patch in the knowledge that it gets fixed.”

~ Spinks

One point that the author made that caught my eye was that modern gaming is great because exposure to indie titles is on the upswing:

“But a 10-year-old gamer today has probably played — and loved — a pretty hefty handful of Indie games by now. Even if they don’t recognize the scene for what it is, or care at all for the ideology, they’re still supporting lesser known artists and rewarding innovation.”

He goes on to say that the price point revolution that’s gotten us away from just one hefty cost for all games anywhere has helped this scene as well.  And I totally agree.

I mean, big-budget, mega-hyped games can be and often are great fun, but it’s terrific to have such alternatives to a gaming diet.  And it seems like the indie scene has really exploded over the past few years as there are plenty of delivery and promotion platforms — Steam, iTunes Store, XBLA, PSN, websites, word of mouth — that are getting some of these little guys big attention.

Look at the Minecraft revolution of a year or so ago, and how that defied the traditional template of a game’s path to success.  There are just loads of games on the iPhone that are from smaller startups that put an enormous amount of creativity and skill into titles and get recognition beyond their wildest dreams.  Bastion.  Trine.  Digital: A Love Story.  Torchlight.  Portal (which wasn’t from a smaller company, but it certainly was a smaller side-project).  Even in the field of MMOs, smaller indie projects such as WURM Online and Pocket Legends survive and thrive due to an increasing desire and love of the little guy with a great dream.  Stuff like this is what gives me hope that we are living in an era where it doesn’t all have to boil down to endless rechurns of franchises since we do have alternatives.

This is one of the reasons I love Steam, because it’s terrific at promoting indie titles that I would’ve never heard of.  Over the past year I purchased two discounted bundles for adventure games (I think I spent $25 total and got 8 titles), and was giddy to realize that people were still making these types of games — and with sequels, no less.  (For the record, the two series are the Runaway and Blackwell.  I’m starting with The Blackwell Legacy, which teams up my character, an introverted New Yorker, with a ghost from the ’20s who’s all about the detective work.)

Another great thing about the indie scene is that it’s more than willing to do what the big boys won’t, which is to dredge up past ideas and designs and bring them into today’s gaming environment.  The retro look, including pixel art, is something I never thought I’d really see again after the whole 3-D graphics revolution, but now it’s everywhere I go (including a whole crapton on iPhone).

I don’t know if there’s a major point to drive home about this other than it’s encouraging to see the little guy having more avenues and potential to get innovation and creative ideas out there, and that gives me hope for the industry at large.