The Illusion of Choice

Bioware has a history of some of the greatest RPG's of all time. A company who has prided itself on choice since it's first game back in 1996 (Shattered Steel) all the way through to it's current blockbuster titles such as the Mass Effect Series, Dragon Series, and Knights of the Old Republic series.

Bioware brought choice to the gaming genre. Where decisions made by your character played out right through the end. If you killed a companion, your companions were gone. If you chose to kill someone then that person was no longer in your story and the rest of the story reflected this right through to the end. Your choices mattered as you leveled, because the story was the game, and it had a beginning, a middle and more importantly an end.

An end. A concept that doesn't exist in an MMO. The story doesn't end and your character continues on for as long as the game world exists. Bioware is about to introduce it's very first attempt in the MMO genre by expanding it's Knights of the Old Republic game in to Star Wars: The Old Republic.

There were so few choices in the game? I didn't know there were so few. No, wait... there still are.

-- Georg Zoeller (full quote)

The developers are very proud of the choices characters will make in SWTOR. Watch any panel from any recent public appearance and you'll see developers go on and on about how choice in SWTOR will matter, but does it really?

From everything learned both officially and unofficially the only choice that will ever matter to your character will be the choice of which class to start your character as. After that, the choices are purely cosmetic at best. The choices while leveling in SWTOR will be about the same as choosing where to level in World of Warcraft.

It's not as if SWTOR will be a 'choose your own adventure' with branching stories and alternate endings. It's not as if the choices you make will severly shape the way your character will be treated by the universe over time. This is an MMO with no ending ever, and choices just don't work like that in an MMO. The developers have already said they won't allow their game to be set up so that a player can 'gimp' themselves for the rest of their character's life (hence the choice to take away companion death and allow AC switching).

The fact is that you have as much choice when leveling in WOW as you do when leveling in SWTOR. The true difference between the games, will be how Bioware decides to treat it's end game, which is where the majority of players will be spending their time.