Firefly MMO

[Velorath]

You're the ones that made the prequels suck.

There's plenty of blame to go around for that.

[Slyfeind]

I love how Lucas crapped all over the EU. That was the best part about the prequels. :)

[Venkman]

You people and your EU.   You're the ones that made the prequels suck.

Err, right. What exactly from the EU as it was before Ep 1 actually made it to the prequels? Oh, besides the name "Coruscant".

And I ask because I want to knw if you actually know anything about EU stuff. Not to epeen. Just not to waste everyone's time.

[Akkori]

No, LUcas can take the blame for that squarely on his chubby ass.

If he had *half* the imagination/vision that *half* of the EU authors have, SW would be bigger now that it was in the 80's. Especially these days with the CGI possible.

[stray]

Uh, Lucas created Star Wars didn't he? He must have had some imagination. Else there wouldn't have been any EU or this stupid discussion for that matter.

[Akkori]

Yeah, he created space ships that fly like air-borne planes, completely stupid jedi who don't know when they should/could use the force to help themselves out, and who frequently spout idiotic drivel. The IP has gotten to where it is thanks wholly to the personalities of the actors portraying the roles he put in. The movies were good DESPITE Lucas, and the best one was one he didn't even direct. Sorry, my Lucas hate stems from my LucasArts hate, which was earned from the SWG fiasco... which is almost all LA fault, IMHO.

[Kail]

Yeah, he created space ships that fly like air-borne planes, completely stupid jedi who don't know when they should/could use the force to help themselves out, and who frequently spout idiotic drivel. The IP has gotten to where it is thanks wholly to the personalities of the actors portraying the roles he put in.

Eh?  So, the setting is complete garbage, and all that makes it work is the actors.  Also, the EU, which uses the same setting but not the actors, is great and wonderful.  I'm not seeing how these statements fit together.

Admittedly, I haven't read much of the EU, but what I have read was some of the worst drek I've seen since Dragonlance, sitting in some wierd null-zone between "Fan fiction" and "soap opera."  Is there some particular series or author I should pick up (not Stackpole, please)?  Any particularly good books to start with?

Also, I haven't heard anything, anywhere, which has linked LucasArts to the NGE, aside from the fact that Sony maybe couldn't run NGE servers and Pre-NGE servers simultaneously because of licensing issues.  If I recall correctly, some SOE code monkey put together a demo, some SOE dev said "Make it so," and the game went live.  Or am I getting my story mixed up?  Those threads are kind of hard to keep straight...

As for Firefly... meh.  Love the series.  The game will almost undoubtedly suck, though.  Done by Whedon, I might almost have a sliver of hope that he'd can it if it looked bad to protect his IP.  Done by Fox, though... unlikely.  We'll see.  If the next press release doesn't mention anything about levels or character classes, I might begin to care.

[Akkori]

Sorry I derailed the thread. On topic, I would love to see a Firfly MMO, but someone near the beginning said it right: It's not so much the IP as it was the characters than made it good. The settign isn't so awesome... just a more futuristic Blade Runner maybe? Maybe that's the problem with all MMO's? People like the "Story", as told from the charcaters view, and that does not translate well into a massive setting where everyone wants to be as special as the charcaters they loved. Boba Fett anyone?

As a niche game though, for fans, why not?

[WindupAtheist]

The EU is like 99% shit.  Yuuzhan Vong anyone?

[Endie]

Yuuzhan Vong.  Hehehe, Chewie is dead.

"How do we make this death memorable and poignant, people?  What would Hemingway have done?"

"We could kill him with a.. a planet!"

Nyuck.  People like this stuff.

[Merusk]

Yuuzhan Vong.  Hehehe, Chewie is dead.

"How do we make this death memorable and poignant, people?  What would Hemingway have done?"

"We could kill him with a.. a planet!"

Nyuck.  People like this stuff.

And that's just part of the argument.

You people and your EU.   You're the ones that made the prequels suck.

Err, right. What exactly from the EU as it was before Ep 1 actually made it to the prequels? Oh, besides the name "Coruscant".

And I ask because I want to knw if you actually know anything about EU stuff. Not to epeen. Just not to waste everyone's time.

Star Wars is my favorite setting out of the vastness of Sci-Fi.  If anything I should be an EU-SW fanboy.  I read everything until the 'force null' Yuuzhan Vong crap, so I know plenty of it.

However, saying the devotees are the reason the prequels sucked has nothing to do with the information out there Lucas shit all over. It was people's reaction to it.  They were appalled that such and such story was nulled.  That x theory was screwed-up.  That  Y character didn't get shown.  Instead of realizing that the EU and all the material they'd been reading since the first Thrawn book was just fan-fiction (as had been stated by Lucas, LucasFilm and LucasArts) they had conniptions.

They refused to let the movies stand on their own and evaluate them.  That wasn't good enough, oh no.  Boba Fett was an Ex-Stormtrooper!  He eats Jedi's for lunch!  Vader was the same age as his wife!  He was never a whiny-bitch teenager with an axe to grind! The Emporer was never formally Sith trained, he self-taught!  The movies are blasphemy! Wah wah wah.

I'm not saying the movies are perfect.  Hardly.  They have inconsistencies in their own right that deserve to be picked-apart.  However, the whining from the fan base that developed from 1990-1999 based on fan-fiction more than the movies themselves hasn't helped the movies, at all.  The expectations and understanding of WHO owned the property by that crowd were, frankly, ridiculous anyway.  The fans think they own something that they don't.

In the end I keep one thing in mind.  They're a fable for children.  That's what the series was envisioned as, and they fascinate my kids and my nephews far more than the originals when I make them watch them (the originals).  They're different movies for a different generation.  That generation enjoys them plenty.

[Venkman]

Ok, I get ya.

It doesn't bother me that the origins of Boba changed, or how Tarkin's reference to the Force as an "ancient religion" turned into something that was eradicated a mere 15 years prior to the statement being made, or that Qui-Gon was actually Obi-wan's Master. Things change when the originator of an IP isn't interested in others extending that IP.

No, what actually bothers me is that they just weren't that great as movies. They didn't do anything for my beloved franchise because of what they were. 8 year olds of today are very different from when we were watching Episode IV out of the back of our parent's station wagons.

I love the EU stuff, warts and all. I actually liked the concept of the Yuuzhan Vong too. I just felt they stretched the stupid storyline over way too many books. They could have done that in about 6, at most, with one of them being the typical trilogy. The reason I liked them though is because it allowed them to explain Zenoma Sekot, which in turn strung together Qui-Gon to Luke, forcing the latter to recognize there's more to the Force than just black and white. Sure it's all revisionist history, but it's fun anyway.

The only thing that bothers me about EU, which has resulted in me simply skipping some books, is the constant "and here again the Republic has descended into corrupt bickering and complacency".

Oh, and that you can easily tell those sacrosanct elements that'll never really change. The Falcon, Lando, all that. Chewie dying wasn't a surprise. They needed a way to kick the book series off. Now, Anakin (Solo) dying, that I was surprised by.

[Sky]

Oh, don't get me wrong.  Not only do I believe that the Mingster was everything Flash wasn't - successful, smart, straight... - I would also suggest that his policy of testing planets for pluck and then destroying the ones that showed it made Stalin look like a fucking pussy.  Sensible policies for a happier interstellar empire.

But you can't do Ming again.  Everything that was needed, was said. 

Yes, because we shouldn't update a movie made in the 1930s. There is nothing new under the sun and whatnot. Vader was a great character and a cultural icon, you'd be lucky to find people who know who Ming is and even more hard-pressed to find people who've seen the original Flash stuff. If Ming were all that were needed, why did the 1980s Flash (ah-aaahhh) bomb? Because Lucas raised the bar for cinematography and superceded the past, same as happens in every genre of entertainment.

The EU stuff I read was trash and I stopped reading it. Some stuff about Han right after he washed out of the Imperial Navy. Could've been decent if the writing weren't so amateurish, it was like reading a D&D novel. I was a rabid SW fan as a kid (7 in 77 and saw it so many times in the theater), but really the only stuff I like is the original trilogy and the two KotOR games (I'm playing the second one right now). I agree with DQ that the later movies just weren't good movies. I didn't even mind Jar-Jar once, but it was indicative of how the humor focus had changed from adult to children. The flying r2 unit and the droid factory scene put in just to have more action in the movie was pretty lame. They were bad movies.

[HaemishM]

Fuck, we've started insulting the shittacular prequel SW movies in a Firefly thread. ONWARD TO PAGE 100 WE GO!

[Ironwood]

Begin landing your troops.

[Righ]

Lol.

I hate it when I'm forced to agree with schild in regards to MMOs.

Lol indeed.

I concur. Lol.

The reason Firefly is like Traveller is the reason that both are like A. Bertram Chandler. It's an imagining of space adventures as frontiering, with obvious homage paid to adventure fiction set in older frontiers, including 'wild west' novels and, more importantly, naval fiction. A Traveller MMORPG will likely happen when somebody can convince Mark Miller that they can carry it off - he's said in the past that he's interested in the idea. However, Miller may be even harder to convince than schild.

[Sky]

Fuck, we've started insulting the shittacular prequel SW movies in a Firefly thread. ONWARD TO PAGE 100 WE GO!

Like I said, I'll be in my bunk.

There's not much to discuss about the Firefly mmo, why wouldn't it drift off-topic? Don't make me call Darth Vader ;)

[WindupAtheist]

What particularly pisses me off about the EU is this desire to suddenly tie prequel shit into the EU books, even though at this point these books are taking place decades after even the original movies.  Am I really supposed to buy that R2D2 has been carrying around a recording of Anakin choking his wife for like sixty years or something?

[Akkori]

Okay, I coulnd't resist the continuing derail... WUA is so right it's not funny. I get SO fucking sick and tired of every fucking book/.movie being all about the same core charcaters. Ugh!! Now they are doing it to the game... no more "Your" adventure begins, but "A pre-made clone of a movie character" adventure begins. God, the lame asses. Thats partly why the EU books were almost all great. Yeah, we had to deal with the same old asses, but we also got Kyp, the kids, Vong, Tahiri, Pellelon, etc....

[Daeven]

Begin landing your troops.

We'll have to nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

[Slyfeind]

WUA, you know far too much about the EU for someone who hates it so much. 

[Azazel]

I like Star Wars rather a lot, and I think SW and Empire are both great films.

but..

The way I've thought of it for quite a long time is that one of Lucas' greatest strokes of luck was managing to surround himself with some incredibly talented artists and designers, and one hell of a composer (before Williams started recycling himself into a vortex). Let's face it, Lucas had some good concepts and turned out a good film with the original film, but the iconic imagery of the Stormtroopers or Vader didn't come from his design pen, no matter how much he and his underlings want to spout that "it's always been planned this way" tripe.

Boba Fett hasn't been viewed as the ultimate cool badass for 25 years because he did anything particularly cool. In the film(s) he didn't fucking do anything besides stand around and then fall down a hole. It's because Ralph McQuarrie and, erm, that other guy came up with such a good armour design. (based primarily off ancient Greek Helmet designs). That's certainly not Lucas' doing.

As for the EU, excepting KOTOR 1, and maybe JK: Jedi Outcast, I give the whole thing a bit fat "Meh". Badly written and drawn comics and books with all the bad cliche' and self-referential cannibalisation of the films but none of the actors' charm? KOTOR 2 might be ok as well, but I'll wait another 2 years till Gizka finish repairing it to the best of their ability before playing it.



As for Firefly, I've never actually seen it or Serenity, but I do hear they're worth watching. Will probably watch them over summer when I'm off work in a couple of weeks. (And that new BSG people keep telling me about.) Certainly the idea of a Space Frontiers/Elite MMOG Done Right appeals to me. But then, so does Car Wars/Mad Max 2 Done Right, and so did Star Wars Done Right, for that matter...

Isn't EVE supposed to be kind of that Elite MMOG though? Though I guess it's more of a spaceships game and not a "flying around in my spaceship with my buddies" game..

[WindupAtheist]

WUA, you know far too much about the EU for someone who hates it so much. 

Part of it is me occasionally buying a book and trying to like it.  Part of it is me picking books up in the store and reading enough to decide I won't like them.  And a lot of it is just me hanging around on Star Wars nerdforums and hearing things.  Like the other day, I just wrapped up a debate on whether Anakin circa the last movie could whip Vader circa Empire, should he/they somehow end up fighting themselves.  Which is an extraordinarily geeky waste of time, but I don't want to hear about it from a forum that has a digital pen & paper RPG section.

Anyway, where was I?  Yeah, I have a few EU books laying around.  But a very few, considering what a Star Wars fanboy I am, and how many years I've had to acquire them.  The original Thrawn trilogy was cool, but you could shitcan all the rest and I wouldn't mind much.

[stray]

Isn't EVE supposed to be kind of that Elite MMOG though? Though I guess it's more of a spaceships game and not a "flying around in my spaceship with my buddies" game..

Eve mimics the space trading element of Elite better than it does anything else. Otherwise, it's a point 'n' click rpg in space. Don't expect traditional space combat.

[edit]

Frankly, I'm afraid to say anything bad about Eve. I don't have time for the flaming that would follow. 

[Sky]

The way I've thought of it for quite a long time is that one of Lucas' greatest strokes of luck was managing to surround himself with some incredibly talented artists and designers, and one hell of a composer (before Williams started recycling himself into a vortex). Let's face it, Lucas had some good concepts and turned out a good film with the original film, but the iconic imagery of the Stormtroopers or Vader didn't come from his design pen, no matter how much he and his underlings want to spout that "it's always been planned this way" tripe.

There was a decent SW documentary on a couple weeks ago and I was amazed at how much that single artist shaped SW. Yet nobody knows his name, it's all that fat bastard Lucas, who imo hasn't done anything decent since his Jabbaness spat out Empire.

Eve: I wish it had X-Wing vs TIE Fighter or Wing Commander style flying :(

[Viin]

Eve mimics the space trading element of Elite better than it does anything else. Otherwise, it's a point 'n' click rpg in space. Don't expect traditional space combat.

[edit]

Frankly, I'm afraid to say anything bad about Eve. I don't have time for the flaming that would follow. 

I don't want to flame anyone  but just wanted to point out it's not really point-n-click "rpg" combat. If you've played one of the Star Trek games where you command the Enterprise and you fly around in 3rd person perspective (targeting with your individual lasers and managing your shields, etc) you'll know more along the lines of what it's like.

But I do agree that in-cockpit flight combat is fun - it'd be cool if EVE provided a hybrid later on (ie: 3rd person for big ships and 1st person for fighters).

[Sky]

Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' 'bout! :)

[Azazel]

There was a decent SW documentary on a couple weeks ago and I was amazed at how much that single artist shaped SW. Yet nobody knows his name, it's all that fat bastard Lucas, who imo hasn't done anything decent since his Jabbaness spat out Empire.

Eve: I wish it had X-Wing vs TIE Fighter or Wing Commander style flying :(

The Stormtrooper guy (and TIE Pilot, which he made on a whim and Lucas shit himself and asked for a bunch of them) is Andrew Ainsworth. His website is here http://www.sdsprops.com/home.html in case you feel a need to purchase a full set of life size Stormtrooper armour. (Helmet is enough for me).

The artist who I was trying to think of was the Boba Fett is Joe Johnston, who was a key designer on that character along with McQuarrie.

I have to say though, that bits of Attack of the Clones were well done, and I liked Revenge of the Sith more than Return of the Jedi and it's When Ewoks Attack. Again though, charismatic actors help a lot (McGregor, Diarmid, Lee, Morrison), even when they're delivering horribly stilted dialogue...

[Venkman]

What particularly pisses me off about the EU is this desire to suddenly tie prequel shit into the EU books, even though at this point these books are taking place decades after even the original movies.  Am I really supposed to buy that R2D2 has been carrying around a recording of Anakin choking his wife for like sixty years or something?

/agree.

One thing I was disappointed with is the stated fight that took place between Mace Windu and Greivous in the Ep 3 book that didn't actually take place, nor was ever referenced, in the movie. That's an example of an editing-room cut that fundamentally changed something I thought a key aspect of the story. How could the baddest-ass lightsaber wielder in the entire IP (created his own style and really couldn't be beat directly) not fight what the Cartoon Network series established as the baddest-ass lightsaber fighting enemy?

The thing I thought the novelization did get right was just how cool (as in cool as a person, calm and collected as a fighter) Obi Wan was. He's probably my favorite SW character, besides either Rendar or Palleon.

[HaemishM]

How could the baddest-ass lightsaber wielder in the entire IP (created his own style and really couldn't be beat directly) not fight what the Cartoon Network series established as the baddest-ass lightsaber fighting enemy?

Because George Lucas wanted him to die like a punk bitch apparently.

[Merusk]

One thing I was disappointed with is the stated fight that took place between Mace Windu and Greivous in the Ep 3 book that didn't actually take place, nor was ever referenced, in the movie. That's an example of an editing-room cut that fundamentally changed something I thought a key aspect of the story. How could the baddest-ass lightsaber wielder in the entire IP (created his own style and really couldn't be beat directly) not fight what the Cartoon Network series established as the baddest-ass lightsaber fighting enemy?

You sure they weren't referencing the fight from the end of the Clone Wars cartoon?  Y'know, the entire reason Greivous was coughing the whole time he was onscreen and NOBODY outside of fanbois knew why.

[Venkman]

Greivous is walking into his ship. Mace shows up late. Greivous turns around, Mace crushes his armor around his "lungs", I guess. Greivous falls back into the ship and the ship takes off. Queue the Greivous-introduction sequence in Ep 3.

When Mace was talking to Obi-Wan in the Ep 3 novelization, he was explaining to the latter why his fighting style (the default Jedi lightsaber fighting style) would actually put Obi-Wan at an advantage. This is because the Jedi who needed to invent their own style (ala Mace's Vaapad) did so to cover a natural disadvantage they have (his primal instincts always just under the surface). This being a specific style meant Greivous could learn and adapt. By contrast, the default Jedi style is sort of a styleless-style, constantly re-adapting, maybe analagous to Bruce Lee's style versus someone who someone who studied and mastered, say, Ishin-ru Karate. During this conversation, he specifically mentioned "when I fought Greivous". I'm going by memory here since I don't have the book with me. But crushing someone's ribcage from 60 yards away isn't really a fight to me.

I wanted to see a fight  :-D

[Sky]

I wondered why he kept coughing. That bothered me and my girlfriend, why put something in a movie and never explain it? Maybe it'll be explained in the 2023 release of the special version of the holodisc director's cut.

[HaemishM]

I just thought he was an asthmatic or something.

Oh and that Lucas was a fucking Jabba-sized tool.

[WayAbvPar]

Oh and that Lucas was a fucking Jabba-sized tool.

That was the one I went with.