Knights Of The Eternal Throne, Mmo Evolution Or Deterioration?

After a summer of silence, and months of anticipation #Bioware has given us some information on #kotet. New York Comic Con Cantina event gave us an inside look of the upcoming conclusion to #kotfe. Ideas of Bioware listening to it’s playerbase may have fallen on deaf ears, some have stated. Blur gave us a teaser trailer and a full trailer. In short, it’s a backstory on Vaylin, so obviously you have an idea of the direction of the story. Vaylin is Emperess now and it’s pretty much an ultimate battle of Good vs. Bad aka Light vs. Dark.

Bioware for awhile has wanted to go back to its roots of story story story-telling, #KnightsOfTheFallenEmpire was pretty much Bioware’s way of testing the waters and dipping their toes in a different direction of what MMO evolution they have in mind. Though KotFE came with mixed reviews, the foundation of the game was the same, now with the next step of a complete revamp of the whole system of the game.

As some news has came out on Dulfy, players of all likes have been caught off guard about the direction of the game. It’s gone from story story story-telling to points points points-grinding. And for some, “this is the straw that broke the Bantha’s back”. Most of the progression raiders I spoke with in one of my guildes are done, they’re cancelling their subs, they are already looking for another game. Some that went to WoW (World of Warcraft), heard the news and they’re not coming back and were very disappointed to hear about the direction of the game.

Let dive into some aspects of the game in regards to KotET shall we:

Galactic Command Overview: (More on www.swtor.com/info/news/blog/20161017) (Dev Tracker post: www.swtor.com/community/devtracker.php)

• Operations
• Flashpoints
• PvP (including Galactic Starfighter)
• Story chapters of KotFE and KotET
• Dailies and Heroics
• Uprisings (upcoming in KotET)

Will all have three difficulties (Story, Veteran, and Master) in most settings. But the Galactic Command is only accessible only when you reach level 70 and are a premium member, meaning in short a subscriber. So free-to-play and preferred don’t have access to the Galactic Command and are not able to attain end game via the GC. But F2P/preferred players may still be able to get crafted items (No set bonuses). We’ll find out more.

Once you start leveling up your Command Rank, you will get a Command Crate that may have loot in there for you based on your advanced class. So it may be possible that you could get tank gear when your dps and vice versa. If you think the 1 in 14 chance is bad, now you odds are increase because it’s based on your advance class not you spec. And it may take you longer to gear up if you want to jump into harder content. So the system is going to be gated somehow. It’s pushing all players backwards for some time, think of it as leveling the playing field.

We all want more information because so far this expansion is leaving little to desire. Many want to see examples of this system, the only objective now in the game is to grind out points. Not gear, points. Speaking of gear, ‘Expertise’ is being removed from the game and now leveled the field to “ANYBODY can PvP”. Honestly, I think this a poor attempt to get players that don’t PvP ‘out of their comfort zone and try something new’ motto. Remember, you can lead a Dewback to water, but you can’t make it drink. Might’ve been better just to do a cross-server queueing.

How we know the game now is going to be gone, with a new interpretation of what a casual MMO is suppose to be.

Sometime back as some readers may or may not know about Star Wars Galaxies, and the NGE (New Game Enhancements), when the NGE hit the servers it devastated the game, lost players, lost subs, etc. At the time, it wanted to be similar to WoW, and failed, it tanked. It never recovered. So is it possbile that this may be ‘Bioware’s NGE’, in redefining what an MMO should be? I would hope not.

You can rewatch the stream #ICYMI (in case you missed it) www.twitch.tv/swtor/v/95573503, judge for yourself. There will be another stream Thrusday, October 20th starting at 2pm PST on www.twitch.tv/swtor.

Stay tuned to The Balance Force.