The Illusion of Reporting

Everything we buy now comes delivered into our hands dripping with hateful bile, bitter with the reek of a clinging cloud of pessimism. I've come to accept that, because I choose to read the papers, watch TV and browse the net. It's the way things work now.

I'm fine with people shitting on the shit I like because it's not the shit they like.

But the thing that's bothering me about the ever-swelling black clouds rumbling alongside SWTOR is that so much of the opinions being espoused are sort of ...well... short-sighted, let's say.

There are definitely legitimate concerns as far as gameplay goes, like, I don't like that level 1 characters supposedly can queue alongside level 50's for Warzones. That's a pretty valid point, I'd say. But the thing is, I'm not raising hell about it on my crappy blog no one reads, screaming to the internets how BioWare is Fail.

It might be a non-issue for all I know, hell, it might be something that makes the game much better. I'm not going to rail against a feature that I've never even seen put into practice yet.

The problem is, everyone else is really passionately railing about all sorts of things and has been doing so for months and will continue to do so until launch. And they need to step back and ask themselves if what they're decrying actually make the game better or worse?

That's just your opinion, man

I'll lurk on the forums and see people proposing completely empty, barren, pointless worlds, they'll ask to  kill all the players everywhere and spam /spit emotes on their corpses, they demand that you can play as mute midget teddy bear creatures.

Which is all well and good. The problem is that so much of the "mmo media" (I can't even type that without laughing) is doing the exact same thing that mouthbreathing forum trolls are doing and are being looked at as sources of credible information.

I'm sure they're just doing their job, being opinion columnists ya gotta have some opinions, you know? But they're framing a lot of absurd arguments with really unwarranted hysterics, just like deranged forum fanboys.

A writer knows that by entitling an article Illusion of Choice, he's making a pretty big accusation...

Readers see this and read the article and the takeaway is pretty straightforward:


"BioWare lied about what they were going to do and your choices won't matter".

Again, this is the same sort of jump to judgement and sensational, hyperbolic reaction to things you'd see on the forums. It just seems like more angry rabble-rousing to me.

Point: BioWare listened to testers and decided not to allow the ability to kill your companions.

Point: You can hit escape to start over a conversation if it isn't finished yet.


Neither of these 2 points negates the "Choices Matter" mantra from BioWare. The inability to kill off a companion doesn't invalidate any of the other story choices you make throughout the game.

The ability to do a "start over" in mid conversation doesn't invalidate the choice-making system either ... in fact, it's much better for clarifying just what choices you are making.

I mean, personally, I don't like the idea of having ten seconds to try to figure out what sort of game-changing decision I'm making based on the 4 word options these games give you...

"Will you help blow up the Death Square?"

A. "I'm a loner, Dottie."
B. "This city is a dying whore."
C. "I do what's needed."

I think what many people wanted with Choices Matter was neither freedom of Choice nor degree of Mattering, but this idea in their head of tangible, dramatic Consequences -- watching a companion die, seeing the world change because you sneezed and killed a village of Fish-dudes, shit like that.


But that isn't what "Choices Matter" means. If you want soap opera moments, play a 20 hour single player game; if you want a persistent world where the stories you've seen and the kind of character you become are based on choices you've made, play SWTOR.