I was reading a new article on Star Wars: The Old Republic in PC Gamer this morning. Along with a video of it I recently watched it really got me excited for the game from mainly a story and singleplayer point of view. The henchmen have stories and make soloing completely viable, every quest has spoken dialogue and cinematic moments, etc. etc.

My main issue though is one day TOR will die. There are a lot of creative people making a story, artistic planets and fun quests and one day all of it will be completely unplayable. Look at The Matrix Online, look at Tabula Rasa. Am I the only person who obsessed over the idea of buying TOR and loving it and then one day having it become completely unplayable? Am I the only person that thinks that is completely insane?

On a site that focuses on reviving and preserving gaming history I hope I can find some others who share my weird concerns. It literally makes me not want to play MMOs at all, knowing one day that experience will die completely. Imagine not being able to play Baldur's Gate today... imagine that experience being dead and gone forever.

Personally, I'm offended that they basically made a single-player game, but built on MMO infrastructure which not only will disappear one day, but forces you to pay to play. No one should be required to pay continuously for a single-player game.

If it does go belly up you could always hope that someone will make a 3rd party server. Was done with UO, EQ, and even WoW (even if they constantly tried to shut it down with lawsuits).

To be honest, I'm kind of surprised that Tabula Rasa was killed off the way it was. Matrix I could understand due to the licensing costs of running a game with WB IP.

I haven't been keeping up with The Old Republic, but MMOs have a bad habit of promising the world and delivering a bit of mud. If an MMO manages to survive its launch and stabilize, I don't worry too much about it going down, because I'll surely be sick of it before that happens.

Well considering how much effort and money went into the game and the fact they have the Star Wars license behind them I Think it will last as much as WoW is, hell if I was getting back into mmo's I wouldn't go back to WOW simply because I already played it. I actually want to get into one of the superhero mmo's such as DC Universe or Champions.

Since I've never found a MMO that kept me entertained for more than a few hours.. no.

Three words: Star Wars Galaxies

It's got the Star Wars license and the combined money of Sony and LucasArts behind it, yet it is barely surviving today. They only have a handful of servers still running and most of them are ghost towns. It doesn't matter what kind of money or effort they put behind it, if the game isn't good and no one plays it, it will fail.

Nope, since WoW will be alive for a LONG, LONG time.

Yeah I highly doubt Lucas Arts are going to screw this up twice, all I every heard of KOTOR Online was good things and people are really hyped for it. plus Star Wars Galaxies came out in 2003, since then MMO's have evolved and more and more people know how to make them and make the actually work. The worst thing I can see happen to KOTOR online is MAYBE it going free to play with an Item store down the road. This is what I think will happen and if i'm wrong well I guess i'm wrong.

That's certainly another factor and usually I would resist it on principle, but for Bioware and Star Wars it is kind of a need-to-play situation. The only other MMO I have ever put time into was WoW.

SOME people are hyped for it, the rest of us are still pissed off that they passed on doing an actual KotOR 3 and instead decided to go with the "cash cow" MMO deal that basically invalidates everything that had already been established in the Old Republic (story-wise).

I'm curious what you mean "obsessed". Are you saying that you are very anxious about the concept of a game going under, and thus losing all that you've built up in it. If so I'd suggest you should be a lot more worried about the stability of your bank (seriously, losing WoW gold, against them saying "sorry, we've got no real money left").

MMORPGs are at a crossroads. Since the success of Wow they have been stagnated, with no-one willing to deviate too far from it and yet still release a highly publicised game. Take Age of Conan, or Lord of the Rings Online, or Warhammer Online. They all recycled the formula, and added "nice to haves". If there isn't significant innovation in the area soon, I suspect that they will go the way of MSN messenger, where previously everyone was on it, now they're on the next thing (I fear that will be farmville online - ultimate farmdown).

So I obsess if anything with glee at watching them fail. I deplore stagnation, and hope that more and more people will think "Hold on, why am I actually doing this?". I don't mind people losing their fake in game money, or their lvl 65 FrogBender character. I think it may be quite a nice wake up call for them. I hate people playing the same game, with the same sequence of button presses (that they looked up online to determine the best sequence of presses) just wasting away supporting a dying concept (or at least one I hope will die).

As I said first, so worried about MMOs, worry about the money that's not really existent in your bank that you use to pay for your MMOs, and once they're paid for - your food.

I'm in a weird mood today, this has perhaps come out a bit too aggressive - oh well.

No he's saying he'll never be able to load one up in 20 years, you know for historical significance or nostalgia's sake. I can show my daughter what playing Ultima or Dungeon Keeper was like, she won't be able to do the same for her kids with any MMOs.

Well that kind of stands to reason, just as I can't show someone in the future what it would be like to play in a sports team I used to play in. There may be other teams, maybe the sport still exists, but it seems an odd worry to think that a social game, which by definition requires people, will always be there. As quickly as they come, they will have to go, we are finite.

I assure you, it won't be as good as most mediocre single player RPGs. The two are not compatible. You will never be able to meaningfully affect other players directly or indirectly in MMOs. It will be WoW, with voice acting, cut scenes, and pseudo choices.