Between its voice acting and writing requirements, Star Wars: The Old Republic is big. This will affect it post-release. Expansions add different things to MMOs, but tend to include two key features: new classes for new characters and new levels for old characters. I have doubts that BioWare will have the resources to write new classes—like writing another Knights of the Old Republic for each—and also to extend old class narratives. I think the SWTOR level-cap will never be raised. I like that.
I understand that it’s a little early to be discussing expansions for SWTOR. The game isn’t even out yet—it doesn’t even have an actual release date yet!—and there’s still so much that hasn’t been announced about it. BioWare is right to avoid the issue considering that at this point they should be more concerned about the initial release than about future expansion.
Fan: “How are you … going to approach expansions or content updates … ?”
Alex Freed, Managing Editor: “Very carefully? … it’s way too early to start talking about future content when we don’t have the game out, but yes when we write we need to write with [future content in mind].”
{@33:45″>DailySWTOR.com: Comic-Con 2010 SWTOR Panel, @33:45}
Still, what we do know about SWTOR’s development already has me curious. We know that this game has had a long development time largely thanks to the resource requirements associated with unique class narratives and full voice-over. We also know that, once the game is released, the developers will still have bug fixes to worry about, features that they had wanted to add by release but couldn’t, more voice over to record (not everybody speaks English, French, or German), and all the normal maintenance issues to contend with, such as customer support. It is a truly daunting task that BioWare has taken on, and in the end I think they’ll have to make some compromises as far as future content.
Expansions can add content of any type, but there’s a list of features generally expected by fans. I’ve already mentioned new character classes and extended level progression, but also vanity items, increased character customization, new raiding bosses, new locations, new quests, new and more powerful loot, new side-skills (e.g., “
professions” in
World of Warcraft), as well as entirely new gameplay components (e.g., PvP arenas/battlegrounds in
WoW, space content in
Star Wars Galaxies). All of these features are important for expansions—all except for one that I dislike. In case you’re missing the blatantly obvious, I mean the practice of extending the level cap by adding extra levels.
I dislike extending the level progression in MMO games for a number of reasons, but predominantly because I feel it’s done simply to keep the “treadmill” going and the player paying the subscription. For example, imagine you’re BioWare (or
Electronic Arts) and you released
SWTOR some months ago and it’s now time to really start pushing for the first expansion. Are players getting bored in your endgame? Well that’s okay, just add 10 levels to the level cap and fill them with kill-list quests and delivery quests. Add new gear so powerful that it resets loot progression in the game, and hand these wondrous gems out exclusively in new zones and instances to make the new content enticing. Sure, this completely invalidates older content—negating any reason to explore old dungeons, kill old bosses, or collect old gear—but it’ll keep people playing. Yes, you’ve just effectively made the long path to the former level max meaningless and at the same time increased the length of the grind, but you can just
speed up XP gain to make up for that. That way new players can breeze by that old, useless, invalid content and get to the good stuff. Hell, add
classes where they can skip the old content entirely! Don’t worry about the fact that the total size of content added by your latest expansion is much, much smaller than the size of the content you just invalidated. Yes, this effectively reduces the overall amount of “good stuff” in your game, but you’ll be able to just
remake the entire game to work better with the broken, spastic character progression that you created through various previous expansions.
Or better yet, don’t. You want to add new content? Then just add the new content! Add it within the existing progression. Sure, raise the “power cap” with new abilities and new loot, but tie those to sprawling quest chains accessible within progression or in the endgame, not to new levels. This way you haven’t invalidated old content, but made characters along the power curve stronger overall. New raids, gear, zones, and narrative (both class and world narrative) can all be added to the endgame without taking the basic progression of your game and breaking its back over your knee.
Tweaking the progression of the game and adding content within existing levels or directly to the endgame can be just as effective if not more effective than adding 10 levels to the level-cap, thereby making those 10 levels the only important part of your game.
Of course, there are reasons why companies do this.
Blizzard isn’t stupid. I’m obviously in the minority as every expansion for
WoW brings players flocking back, pulling in the cash. My desire to “finish” a character so I can move onto another one or not have to grind ever again sets me apart from
WoW’s core audience. Blizzard knows that their core
WoW player doesn’t
want their character to ever be finished—that they play an MMO so content will never dry up. For these players, the treadmill should keep rolling, and in fact should roll increasingly faster to ensure that expansion content never runs out.
WoW players want a return to the core experience of the game, the questing and leveling up,
without having to roll a new character and play through the same content. I understand that, and that’s why when
WoW and I split up, I knew it wasn’t her, it was me. However,
SWTOR is a totally different gal, and I think that she’s more in line with my habits than
WoW is.
The benefits of new levels that I alluded to above—a return to core gameplay, a sense of never being finished, an ongoing progression of narrative—these features must be handled differently by SWTOR because of how they created class content. So much effort has been put into making the core gameplay, narrative, and overall experience of each class unique that BioWare is compelled to encourage players to play new characters to experience other story lines.
Interviewer: “Now, if a player is gonna play through one character, do you think they’re gonna be likely to start over with another character to experience a different story or do you think they’re gonna focus more at the point on endgame content?”
James Ohlen, Lead Designer: “Well hopefully—we really hope players go and play other classes, cause otherwise that would be not too much of a—kind of a waste of resources by making eight different class stories.
“But in other MMOs people often do that. They finish their game—they get to the highest level—and they re-start as a different character, and we’ve made it actually even more desirable to do that simply because, unlike in the other games, you’re gonna have a completely different story … and your experience is going to be totally different. … There’s no shared story whatsoever. … It’s like a separate game.”
{@16:45″>DailySWTOR.com: Comic-Con 2010 SWTOR Panel, @16:45}
There’s no reason for BioWare to go through the effort of extending the level progression for all classes if players are only going to see a tiny chunk of that new content. There’s no reason not to tell players they should play multiple characters if the experience is unique for every class. There’s no reason to invalidate old content by making new levels the only “important” part of your game where all new content is and where the most powerful rewards are. There’s no reason why the world narrative and class narratives can’t continue with level-maxed characters.
There’s no reason to extend the level cap. In fact, it works against BioWare’s best interests to do so. It’s the opposite of BioWare’s rumored “
character legacy” system. It instead encourages players to stay with one character and wait for new levels instead of pursuing the wealth of content that’s already in the game in other classes.
Now, BioWare could always be lazy and not bother adding new classes at all. This would throw my concerns out the window. Instead, BioWare could add 10-20 levels on top of normal progression, keep the stories of the first classes going, and maybe add a choice between two new advanced classes to the mix halfway through. That’s certainly possible. But would that be what players really want? Not that I dislike the classes we’re getting at release, but there are so many Star Wars archetypes missing from that class list that I’d be disappointed. No Leia class? No droid classes? No new Force-using classes? There are so many original character archetypes that BioWare could craft stories for, it’d be a shame to see them still locked in the same eight archetypes years down the road.
Or BioWare could be incredibly generous and do both new classes
and extended level progression. Maybe I’m underestimating their resources or overestimating the challenge. Perhaps they could alternate expansion types: 5 levels here, 5 more levels there, and then
wham! Two new classes,
KotOR XI: Jawas Traders of the Old Republic and
KotOR XII: Ewok Villagers of the Old Republic. Then back to smaller 5 level increases until
pow! KotOR XIII: Gungan Warriors of the Old Republic and
KotOR XIV: Darksabers of the Old Republic. There’s nothing to say BioWare can’t figure out a way to make it work, I’m simply arguing that they don’t necessarily have to. They can create expansions without raising the level cap that work well.
I expect BioWare to add new classes with original story lines. They’ll add new content to the endgame to keep raiders content and chasing new carrots, they’ll expand into new areas of gameplay such as PvP space content, they’ll expand customization options with new species, vanity items, and gear, and the world story will continue with regular free updates and major content releases via expansion, complete with tie in class-specific quests. Power creep in the endgame is inevitable although hopefully minimal. However, unless BioWare surprises me, I expect we’ll be asked to create alternate characters if we want to return to get back to gaining levels—a return to the core character progression in SWTOR. BioWare has simply put too much work in developing unique story lines not to ask that of us.
But what do you think? Am I selling BioWare short? Am I biased against extended progression as a “casual” gamer? Or am I right in thinking that BioWare should keep a static level cap? Let me know!
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