My first exposure to Gears of War was a commercial that aired in late 2006 featuring Gary Jules’ cover of “Mad World”. It was an awkward insertion of a popular song for what appeared to be a grungy, blood spattered action game for emotionally stunted adult males. If I heard that song in, say, a Final Fantasy commercial, that would have been entirely justifiable – predictable even – for the series’ melodramatic tendencies. But watching these juiced-up football players bedecked in pock-marked bulky armor fight off what appeared to be zombies, or insects, or insect-zombies to such a mopey tune was a jarring spectacle. What message was the advertisement sending me? Was I supposed to feel sorry for these battle-weary soldiers pressing on in some city decimated by war to defend the human race? Were these men actually sensitive to the death and destruction around them? My first response was that it was merely a ruse to get me to think this game would be something different. It wouldn’t be about killing endless waves of the faceless alien invader; rather, it would explore the human condition and man’s response to being thrown into a war he didn’t want to fight, but was damn well expected to end.

After about two solid hours of playing the game, I stopped thinking so hard about this. Gears of War is not a statement about the atrocities of war in modern times. The arrangement between Gears of War and its player is much simpler. The game inscribes upon the player the desire to fire a gun – repeatedly and with extreme prejudice. It encourages hooting and hollering and much chest-thumping after each challenging firefight. It revels in the act of shooting a weapon so much that it becomes the only reason you come back to the game. And the game leaves you no other choice but to love it in return.

Gears of War has become a kind of figurehead for the “hardcasual” movement – genres traditionally for the hardcore adapted to be accessible – to the point where anyone who likes it must obviously be a brickheaded cretin and have no taste in video games. It’s always the fate of any successful title, and feels a little more petty every time it happens. But to dwell on that point is to miss the game’s biggest strength: it allows itself to be picked up by almost anyone and have its essence immediately tapped by the Player. That this experience can be enjoyed by the hardcore and casual alike is a feat worth recognizing.

Halo ushered in a new age of shooters that were adapted for the console; Gears of War is the only shooter I have played since that managed to create controls that I feel perfectly comfortable with. Cliff Bleszinski has mentioned that he was inspired by the shooting controls of Resident Evil 4, but Epic has not just improved them as they have perfected them, creating a template that all console shooters should adhere to from this day forward. Playing the PC version allowed the use of Mouse/Keyboard, and I did try it for a short while, but I found myself switching back to my Xbox 360 control pad. They felt jittery and their cold precision took me outside of the game. I felt like I was cheating myself of the experience of playing the original game as it was intended.

Gears of War isn’t just about running into an area and shooting everything in sight. Well, not totally. Yes, the game is on rails as you are coralled through corridors into each new area. But Gears breaks up this motion by employing a duck-and-cover system that slows down the action into bite sized exchanges of gunfire. Working with this mechanic is the Crimson Omen, which is just a fancy name for a damage indicator at the centre of the screen. Take enough damage in a short period of time, the screen turns red and you’re dead. This seems to be a pretty ubiquitous concept in the design of modern shooters, but in the case of Gears of War it’s entirely appropriate. It allows the focus to remain on shooting, because instead of constantly referencing a health bar the primary objective is to survive – instant death could be at any moment. It’s another example of how the game forces you to live in the moment. You’re getting shot at – take cover. Find a good position to return fire. Move on to the next objective. It implies an urgency in the game’s pacing. You don’t want to stop the forward momentum.

Much criticism has been directed at Gears for being unoriginal, and not much of a challenge since taking cover isn’t always required on the lowest difficulty setting. That may be true, but where Gears excels is the delivery. The repetition in the dive-for-cover, crouch, peek, aim, fire, crouch, fire pattern in each encounter makes it second nature, to the point where the game takes on a natural rhythm. I have yet to see a more meticulously crafted refinement of the genre. Every one of the game’s features revolves around shooting a gun, or facilitating the act of shooting a gun. Take cover and aim, or take cover and blind fire to suppress an enemy. It makes reloading an active distraction. Instead of reflexive button pushing, Gears introduces the “Active Reload” where you can reload faster or gain damage bonuses for a perfectly timed reload button press. Mess up the timing, and it’s precious seconds before your gun is usable again. It makes you want to focus on reloading to get it right.

Of course, there’s the Lancer. The Lancer represents a landmark in weapon design. It is a gun that I used for the entire game. Even when it was out of ammo, I used the pistol. I didn’t want to drop it for fear of losing this essential appendage. Never before has a weapon’s melee attack been so incredibly satisfying. In first person shooters, melee is often just using the butt of the gun to push enemies back, to buy some time and get a good shot. It might even work. With the Lancer, there is a genuine feeling of comfort knowing that the chainsaw bayonet is always available for an instant kill. Successfully biting the Lancer’s chainsaw into the flesh of the Locust, their black blood spraying across the screen with Marcus providing the guttural growl and the chainsaw buzzing, always buzzing, until the Locust finally falls. These types of theatrics are simply externalizing something that was felt by every PC gamer since using the chainsaw in Doom, and as such are completely necessary.

The setting of Gears of War might as well be in the Warhammer 40,000 universe; the trivial reasons behind the conflict on the fictional world of Sera and the character design for the Gears are clearly influenced by it. By the end of the game you get the impression that maybe the Locust weren’t invaders, but were always there, awakened by bloodlust to exterminate the encroaching humans. The Gears are just dirtied-up Space Marines sent out to do the heavy lifting – and clearly enjoy it. Having the player portray the anti-hero Marcus Fenix, who makes it clear from the start he has no respect for authority, simply reinforces who this game is aimed at. For co-op, the game introduces Dom: a long time friend of Marcus and his wingman for the entire game. While two more members of Delta Squad are added later – the sarcastic Baird and showboat Cole Train – you spend most of your time in game with Marcus and Dom.

Both the appearance and behaviour of these characters are parody of actual humans, and yet they work because of the game’s subject matter. As a result there’s a certain charm to the way the characters are exposed in the game. Marcus is always grumbling about being the Army’s errand boy. Dom grounds the game with humanity in his quest to search for his missing wife. Baird always has a wisecrack and often saves the day with his mechanical know-how, and Cole Train is either talking smack or cutting loose with a “Whoo!” that would make most pro wrestlers blush. These attributes are instant gratification, and do not require any further investment in the characters. Because Gears of War fully subscribes to the less talk, more action approach. And it does that so very, very well.

Gears of War presents a bleak landscape that has been decimated by war. There are only a few colors on its palette that are all too familiar to those experienced with the id software school of level design. There are plenty of destroyed buildings and burned out cars to create a vast supply of cover, choke points and sniper nests. When the game goes underground into the realm of the Locust, the same drab tones are punctuated by lakes and rivers of bright green imulsion, an apparently valuable substance that was never fully explained. The way Gears of War weaves in and out of these locales is as seamless as the way you duck in and out of cover.

The flow of this game is almost perfect: there is barely time to breathe, but you never feel overwhelmed. The action is brilliantly paced in between the spartan in-game cutscenes that deliver only the bare essentials, so the game gets you back into the action where focus belongs. You get the feeling that it is only you and your squad fighting this war, and this ridiculous situation is made worse by the nature of the missions you are forced to go on. Retrieve this item, repair this structure – as if Delta Squad was really just a gang of intergalactic repairmen. But these are reasons that were thrown into the mix because the player needs an objective in this type of game. Simply taking territory and killing everything on the map isn’t incentive enough for players, according to Epic’s designers. Because they studied video games, and they want to show the player that they understand the needs of the action gamer. They want the player to feel like they have accomplished something, represented by a boss battle or blowing up some random piece of machinery. This dangling carrot – or even the prospect of a payoff – helps drive the action forward.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t always result in the most satisfying encounters. Much has been said about the inclusion of a driving mission that features another appearance of the darkness-loving Kryll, where you are tasked with driving a vehicle that cannot move and use its weapon at the same time. I can see what Epic was trying to do here: create a driving mission that actually has some tension in it, so the need to keep driving is always there to disguise a set of shitty, unresponsive controls. I could shoot a Lancer all day long, performing Active Reloads to the tune of The Presets’ “Let’s Go”. Seriously. The natural flow of the game was broken by a very clumsy sequence that serves only as an irritating obstacle that must be surmounted before the shooting and chainsawing can resume.

The squad in this game is essentially Marcus and Dominic. Cole and Baird show up from time to time for the larger setpiece battles, but you will always be depending on Dom to watch your back. For the most part, Dom’s AI is serviceable. He will defend objectives, take cover when necessary and try not to get himself killed – too much. So when depending on Dom becomes hazardous (or pointless), the use of cover and less brazen tactics will assure survival in the single player campaign. When incapacitated, squad mates resuscitate themselves when all Locust are cleared from the area anyway.

What’s more impressive is the adversarial AI. In fact, it is often shockingly methodical. Just when you think you have the perfect position and start taking pot shots at the Locust, they suddenly see what’s happening to their comrades and come after you. They will suppress and flank – just like your own squad is doing – to get to your position. They will pick up weapons from their fallen brothers, and will often be equipped with the same things your own team is.

This was a brilliant design decision by Epic, because with it they have effectively dispelled all preconceptions about First Person/Third Person shooters as merely exercises in target practice. The Locust are equals on the battlefield and behave as realistically as you would expect in the context of the overall game’s mechanics. They will all at once seem organized and efficient, while brandishing the kind of fearlessness that is frightening in any enemy. With that said, what really bothered me was the Locust’s uncanny ability to sense when I was aiming the Longshot sniper rifle. In well hidden positions, I very rarely could get more than one shot off before they all started ducking or running right towards me, even if members of my squad were the more immediate threats.

This frenetic exchange of tactics results in a new kind of firefight; conflicts that broach new realms of intensity. I could probably stop writing at this point, and simply say that Gears of War is about firing a gun in a series of well-orchestrated firefights that make you feel like thumping your chest or barking like a wild animal after each battle is won. It brings out both the best and the worst in people that play video games. But this game deserves more than that. So I must continue.

Gears of War establishes its formula early on, because it wants to give casual players the most complete representation of the game so they won’t be intimidated by the introduction of new features or a change in pace. All of the tools available in the war against the Locust have been used by the end of the first Act. The player then hands themselves over to the game’s story, where they are exposed to various setpieces, more challenging areas to fight in, bigger monsters to kill and the frat boy banter between the members of Delta Squad.

The extra levels in Act 5 for the PC version of the game lead in to a battle with a Brumak – a creature previously only revealed through the game’s cutscenes. It feels gratuitous in the context of the overall game, but the buildup to this encounter is almost palpable, to the point where there is no other choice but to include the Brumak in a money shot that almost overshadows the endgame sequence (almost). Defeating the Corpser was only pushing it into imulsion; fighting the Brumak was a legitimate contest. It’s a shame that because of the callousness of Microsoft and Epic owners of the Xbox 360 version of the game will never get to experience this. Though the game’s AI is once again the reason for the encounter’s difficulty – Dom would often get himself stomped by the Brumak after running right up to it.

After the fight with the Brumak, the resolution of Gears of War starts with a battle to get onto a freight train carrying the Lightmass bomb that has managed to elude the grasp of the Gears. It’s not a very subtle metaphor for the climax: Marcus and Dom must fight their way through the cars of this speeding frieght train on a collision course with their final objective.

RAAM, a General in the Locust army, is waiting with the bomb. It’s actually a bit of surprise, because the last time this character appeared was in the game’s first Act when he killed off Kim, which made Marcus the leader of Delta Squad. It’s strange plot device, as if Epic was trying to tie the beginning and end of the game together. I never felt I was out to get RAAM in the game; I was always in pursuit of the next objective. But the fight with RAAM is necessary for closure. It is also incredibly hard. Not just because I was constantly worrying about whether Dom was going to get his ass curb stomped again, or trying the avoid the Kryll immediately drawn to any position I took up. This final confrontation is made difficult because you can’t just pull out The Best Weapon (there is none), take cover and chip away at RAAM from a distance. This fight forces you to use every single tactic you learned while playing the game up until this point. Killing RAAM is a fitting end to the game, because it makes you feel you like you have defeated the game itself, and all it has to offer. It is a perfect culmination.

At the very least, Gears of War positioned itself comfortably next to Halo as an original, exclusive and highly bankable IP for Microsoft’s console. But it also brought accessibility to a genre with an unassuming execution of controls, refined game mechanics and deliciously simple objectives. I didn’t realize how much I loved Gears of War until I started explaining the game to others. These wide-eyed, passionate and often one-sided conversations would basically be reduced to the following statement: Gears of War will make you feel like a man.

I have a list of my favorite games of all time always in my mind when I play. It is constantly referenced and compared as I gain new experiences through video games, though it is rarely updated. Gears of War helped me get past my contempt for the trends of video game culture and its influence on modern video game design, and accept the game for the achievement that it is. The shameless machismo and gun pornography may capture a different audience, but the polished production and unwavering focus on its goal assures Gears of War a position in the halls of video game legend.

Early group shot taken after completing the Deadmines as a five piece. No one knows what happened to the mysterious female Night Elf druid in the back row.

Over the past year and a half, I played World of Warcraft with some old friends from University. It started out as a twosome , turned into a threesome, and then a foursome with a person who had no idea what an MMORPG was. So we rolled back to a threesome again, because it’s no fun playing with someone who uses garbage drops as gear and doesn’t upgrade their skills. And so Hykrion the Night Elf Rogue, Firestars the Night Elf Warrior, and Beto the Dwarven Priest sought out the many trials of Azeroth.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I still think we could have made it to the endgame with these characters.

Getting back into World of Warcraft was like slipping into a pair of my favorite pants. Except the pants were stained with Dr. Pepper and greasy Doritos cheese. I have to admit that at first my reaction was revulsion after the first of many (very) late night gaming sessions. Why was I playing this again? It felt so pointless, the incessant mouseclicks echoing off of the barren walls of our home office. As if to defy me once again, the clicking had become hypnotic. I was levelling up. I was gaining mad skills. I was exploring more of the realm than I ever had before. I was a night elf rogue named Hykrion, and I did ridiculous amounts of damage. Sinister Strike. Backstab. Eviscerate. Loot corpse. High fives all around.

At first, our group’s primary function was to quest together. We weren’t used to each other’s playing style, and were not confident enough as a team to take on an instance – our group wiped too much just taking on a mob two or three levels above us. We stole item rolls from each other, not paying attention to what was best for the group. In long treks between towns Hykrion would always run ahead of the group, blissfully ignorant of his low armour class and natural magnetism for Horde NPCs or high-level monsters. We frequently let Beto run out of mana, then complained about dying all the time. And we died a lot. For a while, this was fun. Each group massacre was more entertaining than the last. But then we realized that if we were going to get anywhere in this game, we needed a strategy. We needed to start acting like a group.

In effect, our group was the Holy Trinity of classes in World of Warcraft. A Warrior to tank mobs and collect aggro, a Rogue to do massive damage quickly, and a Priest as healing battery to support these life-threatening activities. We had intended to build level 60 characters, to gallop through Ironforge on our Elite Mounts and adorned in nothing but Purple and Blue items. One of us even bought the first expansion, expecting to jump into The Burning Crusade once we reached 60. Once we hit level 40 and got our mounts, we were going to widen the range of exploration and grind experience to level up for an instance every other week, which would be done to collect better items. For a while, this was happening. We were excited about playing a great game with people we knew.

The emails started as they always did, on Friday mornings. Working stiffs like us needed something to look forward to at the end of the week, and in this case it was World of Warcraft. At first we were constantly trying to control each other’s impulses to keep playing, so that nobody raced ahead of the group. This would ensure a balanced party and maxium experience points for the group. The conversations would be about how we wiped too much the instance before, how someone needed to upgrade their weapons for maximum damage or strategic Talent expenditures to benefit the group. We planned the assignment of rare loot drops before we even had them. We talked about the best routes to get there, and which quests we could obtain on the way. We read about the boss monsters and how best to beat them.

We tackled all of the low level instances like The Deadmines, The Scarlet Monastery, Blackfathom Deeps, and Razorfen Kraul. We got our asses handed to us in the first attempt at Razorfen Downs, after Blizzard had readjusted the level requirements for all instances. By the time we reached Uldaman we were handling instances like professionals. Needless to say we went back to Razorfen downs to finish the job. It was fucking glorious.

But for some reason, we could never get ourselves organized to complete The Sunken Temple, which seemed like the natural next steps for our group by the time we reached the mid-40s. The fabric of our group was starting to unravel. Firestars was too busy at work. Beto and Hykrion had to put their kids to bed later. Hykrion started passing out on the couch at 8:30 pm every night after “bed time”. Firestars fell asleep while waiting for Beto and Hykrion to show up for games. Firestars fell asleep during a game when Beto and Hykrion were disconnected from an instance.

For the last few months of the summer, interest in the game from all three of us was at an all time low. Nobody was talking about what items they wanted from the next instance. Or even scheduling the next instance. Now the challenge was getting all three of us online at the same time to just grind some experience for a while and polish our skills.

By the time we all got back from our holidays in September, I had to make a call as the unofficial group leader: we were done. All three of us cancelled our accounts shortly after, and while none of us expressed our true feelings about this transaction, we were all disappointed that it had come to this. Our group had died most uncerimoniously.

And yet my final thoughts on the game weren’t as bitter as the last time. I don’t regret having played the game for as long I did, because this time it genuinely taught me to appreciate it even more.

Playing World of Warcraft with real-life friends is a lot different than playing regularly with Guildmates. We would see each other outside of the game, and it would eventually come up in conversation. I felt myself talking about our adventures as if they had really happened, convinced that this was not the same game I played a year ago by myself or with hastily assembled pick-up groups. We talked about my insatiable need to explore areas beyond our level, only to bring back Skull-levelled creatures to wipe the group. About how Firestars somehow felt his Shadowmeld was equivalent to my Stealth mode, often ending in a massacre in some dungeon corridor. Our characters had become a part of us; we had no concept that the things we talked about meant nothing when measured against the metrics of normal society.

We also made a point of insulating ourselves from the game world at large, so we didn’t have to deal with middle-school griefers that insisted on challenging our low level characters. We all agreed to reject all guild invites, to avoid having to commit to raids and instances with complete strangers. We had complete control over the experience, and it was good.

Had this game truly evolved since I last played it? Exploring the meticulously crafted areas of this game seemed to take on new meaning when it was shared with others. The “Kill X Monsters” quests became genuine adventures. And if we failed, it was never a big deal. We didn’t have to hear the endless rantings of a Guild officer who clearly invested too much time into the game. It was a game after all; this was supposed to be fun.

So when it was time to say goodbye to Hykrion, I wasn’t leaving because I came face to face again with the game’s shortcomings. Rather, it was because our game group had disbanded, and there was no hope for recapturing the dynamic that allowed me to appreciate the game’s most basic elements: playing and cooperating with others. World of Warcraft did its best to make us feel a part of the universe, but for me the time had come to say goodbye again.

Wrath of the Lich King comes out in a week, but I won’t be experiencing any of the content. We only made it to level 48.

In an incredibly obvious Diablo 3-like announcement, Bioware and LucasArts confirm that they are indeed working on a Star Wars MMORPG set in the age of The Old Repubilc that has probably been in development since Knights of the Old Republic.

Is it just me, or is there something inherently wrong with two massively multiplayer games from two different developers about the exact same subject, trying to appeal to the exact same audience, at the exact same time?

Wait, don’t answer that question.

But this isn’t the same as a fantasy setting being done hundreds of times with roughly equivalent results. This is the most recognizable setting in science fiction. This is Star Wars. With lightsabers for everyone.

The Old Republic as a setting was preordained ever since the critical and commercial success of Bioware’s Knights of the Old Republic. A universe that had only been explored by the Dark Horse comics because Uncle George wouldn’t allow anyone to touch the timelines before and after the Original Trilogy was finally seen as a legitimate replacement for the storylines that traditionally surrounded Luke Skywalker and Company. Or for the more forgiving fans, the Clone Wars/Jedi extinction era of Anakin Skywalker.

I still believe that SOE had a great product with Star Wars Galaxies, but decided to fuck it all up with the “New Game Enhancements” two years ago. So is The Old Republic LucasArts’ way of asking for a “do over”? User activity in Star Wars Galaxies has been in steady decline since late 2005 based on MMOGChart, which coincides with the implementation of the NGE. I’m sure the only people still playing now are the ones that can put up with a grind featuring blasters instead of broadswords.

For some reason, SOE thought that everyone wanted to be a Jedi when it introduced The Jedi Trials with one of its publishes previous to the NGE, but unless you were a new player the community response was less than enthusiastic. Part of what made SWG so interesting is how much it relied on the user base to simply populate the game’s many cities, where businesses were formed, Stormtrooper squads performed drills, and player characters were trained in new skills by each other. You didn’t have to be a Jedi for the game to be rewarding. The NGE created yet another experience grind where you met up with the who’s-who of the Star Wars continuum every 30 seconds making those encounters less special, and certainly took away the feeling that you were part of a galactic community instead of in some Star Wars amusement park.

There were always rumors of multiplayer being proposed as a feature in the KOTOR series, but it was never included in either installment. Which was a perfectly reasonable decision – they didn’t need it. Both games were story-driven experiences, where the actions of the main character had implications on what happened in the rest of the game. They played out like adventure games, where combat was only there to pace the plotline. The back story is important in an MMORPG, but it is completely unrealistic to cater to each player and provide an individual storyline in a game world made up of thousands of other player characters doing the same thing. It’s like killing the Elite monster at the end of a quest chain in World of Warcraft. You follow the quest line to get there, finish off the big bastard, only to have it respawn for another group. To provide each player – or each group for that matter – with a unique experience in-game would require an incalcuable amount of options that could never possibly keep up with the rate at which they are consumed.

In an interview with Gamasutra on story in The Old Republic, Daniel Erickson of Bioware thinks he has an answer for us.

[We have a team of] Dedicated writers, writing for years and years…we have more story content than every other BioWare game ever made combined, so it is the largest project.

We realized at one point that we were doing enough content, just dialogue, to fit in dozens of books. It’s pretty mind blowing!

That’s a lot of story. But how will they manage the challenge of players wanting their own story, or at least have their choices affecting part of the overall game narrative?

Well, again, one of the things that’s really important is that the galaxy is huge. Things can be changing that are amazingly important to your world. What you’re doing and what’s happening that doesn’t necessarily affect every part of it. And there are actually… amazing, huge changes happening in [places] all over this game world that we don’t know about.

That’s interesting. It seems like a nice way of saying that the story will be implemented like any other MMORPG. In reading the interview it’s pretty clear that Erickson thinks it can be done – and he rightly points out that being the first to attempt a task like this is always hard. And even if they only partially implement these features, there will be someone else to follow with a better product and continue the pursuit of this admirable goal. Personally, I don’t need an online RPG to satisfy my need for story, but it seems that the rise in popularity of MMORPGs coupled with those lucrative subscription fees make single-player RPGs seem like a thankless proposition. I can agree with the concept of limiting player alignment to two factions to form the core of character plotlines – but I want to see unique classes other than Jedi, and allow players to have an impact on the in-game community, not just the story.

Unfortunately, EA Games president Frank Gibeau had to open his big mouth to say that World of Warcraft was the target for The Old Republic, making ridiculous arguments like the recognition of the franchise alone was enough to win over subscribers. Didn’t he get the memo? Any MMORPG launched in the post-Warcraft age can expect to do no better than second best as a rule. I don’t think any MMORPG in history – Lineage included – has penetrated the world MMORPG market like Warcraft has. Instead of trying on de-throne Blizzard, Bioware should consider what worked in Star Wars Galaxies. Their focus should be on making a genuine Star Wars experience that takes advantage of the setting, not embarrassing themselves by creating yet another grindfest. With lightsabers.

The real surprise in all this is the lack of any snide commentary from Matt Gallant, who usually goes out of his way to slag off the gaming website community when they parrot frivolous rumours like this.

Let’s get the cosmetic stuff out of the way: the new races are boring. The Blood Elves simply look like re-skinned Night Elves. Though I find it interesting that a “pretty” race was added to the ranks of the generally nasty-looking Horde. I’m sure this will cause an influx of new Horde players to try the new Spellbreaker class, which up to this point seems to be only available to the Blood Elves. The Draenei look like a cross between Hellboy and the Twi’leks from the Star Wars universe, sharing their overall soft appearance with the Night Elves. They certainly look friendly enough to be an Alliance race. But no new class for them. Judging from the race’s ability to wield Holy Magic I can see Paladin, Preist, Warrior and Mage being available.

A new profession will be offered: Jewelcrafting. It follows, then, that socketed weapons and armour will now be part of loot drops and Blacksmith recipes. I get the feeling that Diablo II really was their model for the simplistic, action-oriented gameplay. This is a good addition for those that want to customize their gear without having to level up any crafting skills to the point where they actually produce useful items. I’m assuming of course that socketed items and gems will be readily available to all players of the expansion. It will be interesting to see how this feature is handled for people without the expansion, because there is no doubt there will be a high demand for these materials at the Auction House.

The expansion also adds a new area: Outland. Formerly the Orcish homeworld of Draenor, it has since been ravaged by the Burning Legion. Being able to explore the floating remains of this planet seems like a cool concept, but it sounds way too much like Everquest II’s Kingdom of Sky. Flying mounts are also made available in Outland, but I question the decision to limit them to Outland despite their immediate practicality in this new wasteland. It seems kind of pointless when more content is being added to the core game; why not allow players to explore it on their flying mounts? It’s probably just another case of keeping the expansion pack owners separate from the rest of the players, a tactic used in Star Wars Galaxies for their own flying expansion. But at least SWG had an excuse: you can only fly in space. I could buy a ship and go anywhere in the galaxy without having to buy transport tickets. Blizzard is basically telling me that I still have to pay for griffin rides when I own a flying mount.

The Burning Crusade certainly expands the content of the existing game by adding new areas to explore, quests and instances to raid. However, I don’t see it addressing the fundamental problem with the endgame that requires so much time and effort to gain any measurable benefit from. The additional 10 levels seem arbitrary when you consider what’s involved in getting through them. It essentially propagates the idea that high level players not involved with raids or guilds must start yet another alt or gain the next 10 levels through grinding instances in pick up groups. I know there will be many people that buy this expansion the day it comes out, but are they really that desperate for more of the same? I had hopes that this expansion would be alluring enough to make me want to play the game again, but it seems like Blizzard is continuing its construction of another Everquest.

In late October of last year, the announcement was made that a collection of “New Game Enhancements” (NGE) were going to be implemented, which included nine “iconic” character classes and a completely revised combat system. This came hot on the heels of the badly needed Combat Upgrade that did more harm than good. The third expansion for Star Wars Galaxies, The Trials of Obi-Wan, was released the day the NGE changes went live. Little did players know that the NGE were also waiting in this expansion. In fact, players were so outraged by this tactic that SOE offered a refund to those that purchased the expansion online only to find that their favorite MMORPG had been irreversibly changed. Veteran players were given the Jump to Lightspeed expansion at no charge, as if it were some salve to heal the festering wounds.

I only played Star Wars Galaxies for five months, but I continued to follow it pretty closely despite my lack of involvement in the game world. I can trace the downward spiral back to mid 2004, where talk of improvements to the Jedi system along with the upcoming Jump to Lightspeed expansion had players still wanting the base game to be fixed in a frenzy. The developers efforts seemed focused on fully implementing the Jedi Knight system, which to that point was only something that was reserved for the hardcore. Since the implementation of the Jedi system, the game has been bleeding subscribers, with additonal expansion packs thrown together to maintain interest among the players that were still around. As with most MMORPGs, Star Wars Galaxies’ harshest critics were the ones that had invested themselves heavily in the game world. These are the people who depended on the game’s economy and structure, only to see the game receieve a complete overhaul to make the game all but unrecognizable.

The New Game Enhancements can be summarized into three main components: the new character classes, the combat system and the injection of more “Star Wars” content. The nine new classes can apparently be traced back to their origins in the original game’s system, but it removes the flexibility and freedom to explore roughly 32 professions, and instead forces players to follow a predetermined path. Jedi are also immediately selectable, which ultimately reduces their uniqueness, completely contradicting the context of the game’s setting, where Jedi are all but extinct. As a result of introducing these new classes, niche professions like creature handling were effectively removed from the game. These changes are frustrating to no end for existing players, whose characters they have been building for the last two and a half years have become obsolete.

The class levelling system is based on general experience points, not the usage of skills as in the original system. The free trial consists of the first ten character levels, and is set up almost exactly like Everquest II: Trial of the Isle. Each class goes through a series of four “phases” of increasing special abilities, with the final phase reached at level 70. At each level-up, you’re automatically given a new ability. This is exactly like Everquest. It is also a lot more boring.

From a game design perspective, this was probably an easy decision to make. The class balancing becomes simpler, the grind for specific skills disappears, and the character development system is less intimidating for new players. From a game world perspective, however, this change does away with one of the things that made playing Star Wars Galaxies so interesting: you weren’t a class, you had an occupation.

The combat system has become fully real-time, and now resembles a third-person shooter. Collision detection was a bit unfinished as well, as I could shoot (and be shot at) through walls. Hostile encounters were no longer discrete firefights; this was hack and slash with blasters.

Star Wars Galaxies begins with you being rescued off of a ship by Han Solo, Chewbacca and R2-D2. This in itself was ridiculous, because if you think about the game’s population, how could they have time to pick up everyone? The insistence on more interaction with NPCs was a good decision, as the quests become less of a job board and add a bit of depth to the experience. However socializing with famous NPCs should be a special event, not commonplace. It’s a big universe, and the game’s introduction doesn’t make it very clear why your character is so important. Part of Galaxies’ appeal is that it was a believable universe – maybe too much so – where the world seemed to go on just fine without you. I don’t need to hang out with Han Solo for my experience to be validated. Part of what made Star Wars Galaxies so immersive was the anonymity of the universe – it was up to the player to make a name for themselves within the community. It wasn’t handed to them in some half-baked story.

Though as a former player of an Artisan/Marksman, the reworking of the Crafting system was the biggest disappointment in the NGE for me. Because of the new looting system, where both credits and decent items are available as monster drops, it lessens the need for the Trader class. The Trader is divided into three sub-classes that must be chosen from during character creation: domestic goods (clothing, food), munitions (armour, weapons), structures (buildings, ship hulls), and engineering (droids, some specialty weapons). Star Wars Galaxies had one of the most detailed and robust crafting systems that I’ve ever used in an MMORPG. Now the crafting system feels stripped down, and there doesn’t seem to be that much room for tweaking the final product. Once you’ve chosen the Trader class you’re pretty much stuck, because the ability to craft items is not available to everyone. I’m not sure if the Trader can be self-sufficient and mine raw resources like the Artisan could, but this would make the class a little more interesting to play.

Out of everything I’d say that new character class system is easily the most devestating change to the game, as it upends its entire foundation, creating an obvious turning point where the game is changed forever. A decision like this should have been saved for a sequel – SOE should know best of all that keeping two generations of a series alive is not impossible (with Everquest and its sequel), though perhaps not the most financially sound decision.

As the market for MMORPGs grows, and the conventions of the genre become deeply rooted in players’ minds, occupations like “Entertainer” or “Trader” are less appealing to the newcomers who seek instant gratification. I hate to blame World of Warcraft for this situation, but it’s true – it’s very hard to expect someone who’s buffed out warrior sporting fearsome looking plate mail to settle for a droid engineer or a dancer in a cantina. There is a definite lack of heroism in Star Wars Galaxies, but to me that was just part of what made the gameworld so immersive. Star Wars Galaxies always had the potential to be a groundbreaking MMORPG: a self-sustaining gameworld that makes players feel like they’re actually part of it instead of just a tourist doing repetitive quests that are of little consequence in the game world. Not that Galaxies lacked inane quests; there were just other, more interesting things to do. There were real options for building in-game communities. There was ample opportunity for roleplaying.

These radical changes brought by the “New Game Enhancements” makes two points painfully obvious:

1. SOE was not satisfied with the original game model. They did not trust the original design. SOE wanted another World of Warcraft/Everquest.

2. SOE could care less about the community and the time they have spent building the Star Wars Galaxies universe, and in some cases, influence changes to the game.

The second point being infinitely more damaging than the first, both to the success of the “new and improved” Star Wars Galaxies, and SOE’s reputation overall.

It’s regrettable that this had to happen, but SOE has a business to run. I can understand from that perspective why they would decide to change the game into something more accessible – Galaxies has constantly been struggling with its moderately sized but dedicated community since its release in July 2003. The subscriber base was at a standstill, if not already fading before World of Warcraft launched in late 2004.

Naturally there are rumours about further additions to the game to inject more Star Wars and less, well, MMORPG and of course the ones that everyone wants to believe about the game being rolled back to what it was. Whether there’s any truth to these reports remains to be seen, though I think they’re materializing out of former players’ desires to see their favorite game returned to its former glory. As someone’s signature on the official forums aptly put it: “SWG – Where removing the playerbase from the game is considered an enhancement”.

Sirlin’s article prompted a thoughtful list from Raph Koster, which in his words was more of a lament of the state of MMORPGs than a bona fide response. I think the most fascinating aspect of this list is that is speaks as much about the gamers than the games themselves (see: “Staring at someone who is talking the politest thing you can do. Because the only other option is to not look at them at all.”)

There is an ongoing conversation at Terra Nova about this list. Ignoring the attack and defense of SOE and Koster, I think the antagonist in the discussion brings up an excellent point:

From this point on Talent will be one of the biggest determining factors in the success of any given MMORPG. When you see a screenshot from WoW you know it’s WoW. When you see a screenshot from Eve Online you know it’s Eve Online. When you see a screenshot from Chronicles of Spellborn you know it’s Chronicles of Spellborn. You can’t create the artistic talent reflected in those games with polygons, pixel count, or realism. You can’t replace the musical talent in those games with a movie soundtrack. You can’t substitute the depth and beauty of the lore created for these games with player created events. In order for a MMORPG to be a true success it has to have genuinely talented and inspiring artists working together to bring it to life – just like in any other artistic endeavor.

The first thing I noticed when I joined the beta of World of Warcraft were the incredibly unique environments. I was able to ignore the low poly character models and drawn-on shadows, because this game had style. The limited amount of background established by the Warcraft series had been fleshed out to make you feel like you were living amongst a contintent-spanning conflict. While I enjoyed Star Wars Galaxies immensely (before it was irreversibly changed into another Everquest), I tend to agree that it suffered from a lack of a definable style. To be given such a powerful license and still not manage to convey what made the movies so magical did irreperable damage to the game’s reputation. And placing immediately accessible, famous NPCs into the revamped version is no substitute. There’s nothing unique about World of Warcraft’s gameplay – in fact, before I cancelled the gameplay had become mind-numbingly tedious. But that never stopped me from exploring, because there was no shortage of skillfully constructed atmosphere to take in.

I’m all for changing the current play model for modern MMORPGs; Star Wars Galaxies gave me a taste of what was possible. But first and foremost, I want to be entertained.

Truth be told, I probably haven’t touched my main (a night elf hunter) for about two months, and haven’t been the worse for wear. I simply don’t have the time to spend on what is essentially just something to occupy all of my game time, when I’d rather be enjoying something, well, newer. It certainly makes writing about games a lot easier.

Before making the final decision to cancel my account, I was then presented with an animated gif of a robed figure begging for forgiveness, and the following:

The peon is full-on weeping now. We hope you’re happy. Are you positive you want to deactivate your subscription?

I never got this kind of guilt trip with Star Wars Galaxies, though navigating SOE’s Station Subscription site was a bit of a headache. Everyone knows that MMORPGs have addictive qualities. Some people’s lives are so upended by them they seek professional help – or do nothing and lose everything. Why is Blizzard trying to make this process harder for someone who’s looking to turn their life around? Though these comments may be intended as a humerous send off, I don’t think the guy who lost his wife and kids to a game is laughing.

In the future, there are cars with guns. Lots of guns. There are vast, unending reaches of post-apocolyptic wasteland to explore, in varying shades of brown and grey. And sometimes it rains, making the polluted atmosphere almost tangible as your headlights attempt to penetrate the gloom. Then the mutants come, the pallor of their tainted skins reflected in your high-beams. You mow them down with machine gun fire, one by one, running over a few for good measure. But they don’t die. The machine gun only does 1-2 damage. The mutants rise again after your 2 tonne vehicle just ran headlong into a crowd of them. Something isn’t right here.

Welcome to Auto Assault.

Auto Assault certainly succeeds at capturing the look and feel of a post-apocolyptic environment. The influences of movies like The Road Warrior and tabletop classic Car Wars are immediately obvious. The setup is that a plague spread across the Earth leaving three factions in its wake: the last humans who managed to find protection, the BioMeks who are mechanically enhanced humanoids, and the mutants, who braved the contamination and gained abilties of their own in the process. Each faction has four classes each, but upon close inspection there really wasn’t much difference between them. I attributed that to the typical overbalancing that goes on with newly invented classes that don’t fall into the typical mold of other RPGs (see rogues, healers, warriors – they are all pretty much the same in every game).

I levelled two characters for the beta: a level 5 human commando, and a level 8 BioMek agent. I spent quite a bit of time at the beginning tweaking my avatar’s look with the game’s many options, but I found this incongruous with the amount of customizing I can do with the class’ default vehicle. Considering I spent 100% of my game time within my vehicle, I expected at the very least to decorate my car with a variety of decals and other assorted ornaments, though obviously nothing that would affect gameplay (such as a cow catcher – something I never found in the game, unfortunately).

Within the game, the “hard points”, or major components are customizable. These are the weapons, armour plating or motor which can all be looted or purchased, and the game’s skill and crafting system allows you to tweak the parts you do have or craft entirely new ones. This was a lot like the many spacefaring RPGs like Freelancer or even Jump to Lightspeed, and would be immediately familiar to veterans of that type of gameplay. To me, this is the meat of the game – creating mobile weapons of mass destruction that can be pitted against other players, or NPC driven vehicles. But things don’t exactly work out that way. Players have to earn money and experience to increase their skills somehow, and this is where the conventions of MMORPGs are wedged in.

Combat is the lifeblood of most MMORPGs; it is the means by which rewards are obtained and ultimately the reason why we continue to play the game. As such, it should be consequential in spite of its repetitive nature, because it’s what players are going to be spending 90% of the game doing. Halfway through Auto Assault’s tutorial it became clear that the combat needs a lot of work for this game to succeed.

I’ll get to the point: damage doesn’t make any sense in this game. Introducing guns into the RPG is a difficult compromise. The skill and damage output can be left up to the player themselves, removing the need for points to be spent in this attribute, and focusing instead on bonuses to each hit. Or, the skill is left entirely to the amount of points spent, creating a kind of glass ceiling for gamers that are used to the behaviour of pointing the mouse to target a guaranteed hit. Jump to Lightspeed followed the former system; Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines held fast to the latter. In a game where the action is intended to be fast paced, this is a hinderance.

I think what it comes down to is reasonable expectations: when I rotate my vehicle’s turret and target an enemy within range, I expect a hit rate of at least 90%. I don’t want to see a chain gun emptying hundreds of bullets that do a possible 1-2 damage into an unarmoured targets in close proximity and then have most miss. But this is what ends up happening. As a result combat in Auto Assault degrades into holding down the “fire” button while driving around the target in circles, reminding me of some of the worst battles in Freelancer. Though there is a side effect to this approach, as weapons will overheat through extended use. Against tougher enemies this is a problem, but the fact that you can simply try and out maneuver your opponent by driving away makes this vulnerability a nonissue. Enemies on foot could take direct hits from my vehicle, and it usually took a couple of tries to actually run one over successfully. In a nice homage to Carmageddon, they erupt into a could of red. Other vehicles don’t take much ramming damage, either. I’m giving the devs the benefit of the doubt here, and assume that my armour plating wasn’t strong enough. Though something is telling me this system simply wasn’t implemented. I also took no damage after crashing my car through buildings or into obstacles.

The majority of terrain, buildings, and obstacles are destructable – but it regenerates. This still provides some interesting side-effects to firefights, and is honestly the way it should be in a game that’s so action-heavy. The physics are complete completely out to lunch, however. I can be stopped dead in my tracks by driving into an NPC, yet driving headlong up a cliff produces some fairly realistic responses in my vehicle. Driving overall feels sloppy, and while I don’t expect precision controls, some noticable difference between driving an armoured car and a dune buggy should be expected.

What’s worse is that there is no real penalty for death, as your car’s “health” simply reaches zero and you are instantly transported to a repair station that will regenerate your vehicle’s armour for free. And since repair stations are usually close to mission areas, there’s no real time lost getting back to the task at hand. The worst I had to put up with was fighting off other players for a spot on one of the repair platforms. I had flashbacks of trying to obtain a tank at the beginning of a map in BF1942.

It’s generally accepted that quests in World of Warcraft are repetitive, they just happen to change the environment in which they’re given and executed. They end up feeling different (to a point), and along with the offered rewards allow players to forego the monotony. The quests in Auto Assault feel more like those of the original Star Wars Galaxies, before it turned into every other MMORPG (definitely a topic for another day). The NPCs in Auto Assault might as well be mission terminals, because the seemingly random Kill Ten Monsters or Deliver Part X to City Y quests are completely uninteresting and do little to enhance the gameworld for your particular race or class. There is a lot of travelling, too, and so having a vehicle right away is a bonus for new players who have to suffer through many levels in other MMORPGs before getting a mount or vehicle.

I presumed that the amount of driving at full throttle through the dune-scattered desert would result in some kind of sub-game that monitors tricks or style. I received some medals for significant air time, but that seems to be the extent of it. What about leaping off of a cliff to land in crowd of unruly scavengers or demolishing a building? There was a bonus for pretty much every stunt pulled in Carmageddon. Joined by the absurd levels of violence, it’s part of what made the game interesting to play. The possible avenues of destruction available in Auto Assault make including these types of gameplay bonuses kind of obvious.

The post-apocolyptic, Road Warrior-styled setting is one that is ripe for material, yet has never really been exploited by games. As such, Auto Assault could have easily differentiated itself from its competitors. Instead, it suffers from its desire to become the next big clickfest MMOG. It’s unfortunate that the game’s designers have clumsily grafted the standard MMORPG model onto a setting that doesn’t require it. The action-heavy gameplay would be fine for casual sessions that encourage players to do battle with each other. Vehicle upgrades and tweaking add enough depth to the gameplay that encourages a long term investment. However this insistence on having character “levels” doesn’t suit the material when most of the game is encountered while driving. As a result Auto Assault is reduced to the tired old grind, which undermines the entire setting. It becomes easier for prospective players to detach the game world from its underpinnings – they will gladly pay the same montly fee for something like World of Warcraft instead. Put simply, Auto Assault just isn’t that much fun, and the lack of any real discerning factor from its contemporaries make it a tough sell in an already saturated market.

Note: These thoughts are based on the weekend beta event that took place from January 27th to January 31st, 2006. I understand there have been some significant improvements in the game since the beta launched last year, but that means absolutely nothing when the product I’m playing is not any good.