I don't really play games for the story, most people into RPGs these days seem to, probably because that's the only thing modern RPG provides. As scifi fan I can't help but laugh at mass effect in particular but bioware has always had massive plotholes and nonsensical elaborate details that don't add anything to the story, pretty much like a soap opera.

People play games for completely different reasons. People are also more or less into a game on that basis. You can be a casual fan of game stories in RPG and a strong fan of DND for example, like me.

And you can rent a game and give it a halfassed go or register on their forums and make fan fic and kiss up to gaider and hepler all day. I think that most people who consider themselves RPG fans who do play newer bioware games fall into the first category.

I don't think there's that many hard core fans of DA but that's EXACTLY what the hardcore fans are. That's why they like it. They give just enough skim of swords and sorcery to capture most of the old school crowd and almost all of the story crowd, then they spend the time doing elaborate fan service to other groups to rope them in.

Frankly I don't think fat housewives are ever going to play a real RPG they have no interest in that, they love their twilight nonsense, though. So they get a new market. They get a new market for perverts and pedos too in the same way, a huge market that they'd never otherwise get a portion of.

If you ever sit down in a marketing meeting that's exactly how it works, trying to get new markets. How do we get women to use our baseball bats? How do we get black people to drink wine? Of course usually I don't think they are going after the pedo market, bioware is really an innovator in that respect.

That's why people barely drink beer any more in the USA it's all least denominator crap. That's why sci fi is such crap now, too, and why books in general have had a giant drop in sales for decades. It's a race to the bottom chasing short term gain at the expense of long term sustainability, but the people doing it don't care; if games market is ruined they just move on to something else like shoes or fast food.

It's part of why games are crap now (why almost everything is more crap than it used to be) but not the whole story.

If you're referring to SWTOR, DA2 and ME2 then yeah. In the case of Dragon Age: Origins though I just completed a seventh play-through a month ago. It's easier to find fans of Origins on other gaming forums asides from the official site and that's because it's a great game according to the majority.

I can only say I've ever really liked only Baldur's Gate, NWN and Dragon Age: Origins. Mass Effect 1 was meh. ME2 was good. ME3 was watered down. Jade Empire was horrible and I never even played the KoTOR series.

SWTOR is not the same as KOTOR, please don't mix these things up, although both have strong similarities in some points.

Especially considering that SWTOR is an MMO, meaning that there's respawn, LOTS of enemies, and MMO-related architecture & mechanisms …

Only I didn't.

I actually haven't played either SWTOR or KOTOR.

My opinion on SWTOR however comes from what others have said. People don't hold it high up there with what Bioware had produced in the past.

swotor doesn't seem all that bad from the standpoint of comparing it to kotor, though I didn't play it. Only thing to seem really bad is the graphics which seem to be worse than even kotor which was like 10 years before swotor.

Ultimately it was a silly delusional project that bankrupted bioware, and really was the end of bioware for all intents and purposes. It would have been more merciful if they just stopped making games after EA bought them, but at least the drs can retire with some cold cash.

Silly me I had hoped EA would buy the DnD license and finally make BG III. Nope! They'd rather make a halfassed off brand psuedo RPG instead, and wizards of the coast would rather make NO games than get only a million per game for their license, which they have done nothing good with since gygax was driven off.

I like the graphics of SWTOR very much, I must say. I'm rather used to low-end graphics (always was), but SWTOR kind of blew me away.

I must also say that I didn't play any shooters in the last 10 years (apart from Star Wars Battlefront I / II), which usually do have the best "state of the art" graphics available.

The only thing that *really* goes on my nevers nowadays is the hack & slay nature of SWTOR.

The "class stories" are an refreshing holiday from that, so to say. ;)

I thought ME1 was a lot better than ME2, but opinions vary on both games. I wouldn't call Jade Empire horrible, but it's definitely one of their weaker titles overall. KotOR is overrated imo.

I like DA:O quite a bit, but I couldn't imagine playing through it seven times. It's not that good. I couldn't even make it through the first chapter of DA:2.

I think grind is unavoidable with MMOs. Maybe I will give it a shot some day, actually doesn't sound half bad to me.

I just hope that grinding will end when the market is filled so much that companies will see the need for diversification to actually attract new customers - by introducing different mechnics to MMOs.

A friend of mine still plays a MUD from time to time nowadays.