Sometimes I just don’t understand why things are the way they are. Today, after a bit of playing through the TERA open beta, I came to the realization that I just don’t understand why a theme-park game like this would even bother with allowing open PvP. Not that I don’t enjoy PvP, because I do, but when the only way to progress is PvE, it sort of makes PvP pointless, at least until endgame.

The only real reason to participate in open PvP, for theme-park games, is to basically make the lives of other players worse. You’re not defending any land or property and you’re not attacking any either, plus there’s no looting, so really there’s no reason to kill anyone.  Open PvP is built for sandbox games because they incorporate other systems around PvP to make it meaningful, but theme-parks do not. So when you incorporate this system in a theme-park game, its basically just developers trying to grab at the PvP market and expand their player base.

Now, I haven’t gotten past level 20 in TERA’s closed or open beta, so I don’t know how the end game will be, but I can tell you right now, most players are ignoring open PvP and concentrating on PvE to level up and rightly so. Why spend any time PvPing when it gets you no where?

This is why it’s so refreshing to see what ArenaNet is doing with Guild Wars 2 and creating an open PvP world where all your actions directly effect the world. You’re not killing other players for the hell of it or to ruin their day, your doing it to win the war.

To have a successful open PvP system, the game mechanics really need to be build around it, supporting it and giving meaning to PKing.  Theme-parks by definition are the exact opposite and cannot, and will never create an engaging open PvP system regardless of what developers or publishers say. Open PvP and theme-parks just don’t work together.

On Tuesday, it was reported that ex-NCsoft employees were found guilty of leaking Lineage 3 information and coding to a rival and were sentenced to jail time. It was reported generally by media outlets as a win for NCsoft and implied by some that Bluehole Studio, the makers of TERA, were guilty because of the verdict.

Yesterday Bluehole Studio’s fought back stating they are “NOT guilty“, calling NCsoft a “corporate bully“.

NCsoft is a billion-plus dollar corporation, so they can afford to have a team of high-priced lawyers spin out reasonable-sounding documents. These baseless accusations have led to unfounded rumors, which is disappointing and unfair. But that doesn’t mean the rumors are true.

It is no surprise that the latest spin on the story has it that “TERA is guilty.” That is wrong. For the record, after extensive Korean proceedings, Bluehole Studio was NOT found to have made any use of any NCsoft trade secrets in the form of source code or game design. In fact, TERA didn’t even exist when the Korean case against the former NCsoft employees arose, and neither did En Masse Entertainment. In Korean civil proceedings, Bluehole was also found NOT to have been responsible for the exodus of NCsoft developers.

To our fans and followers, we want to let you all know that we are not going to let a corporate bully or baseless rumor mill derail us from focusing our efforts on delivering TERA to you on May 1, 2012.

BlueHole Studio’s goes on to point out that NCsoft has not filed a motion in the US to prevent the launch of TERA, suggesting they have not done so because the claims that Bluehole used any trade secrets is indeed false.

While the guilty verdict for the ex-NCsoft employees does prove that they did indeed shared trade secrets with Bluehole Studios, it has not yet been proven that Bluehole used any of them.

While the image posted above is from one of the documents submitted to the case and shows many character similarities, really how many different ways is there to draw a elf, high elf, human etc? Half of them don’t even look alike imo other then physical size.

Today kicks off the start of TERA’s open beta testing phase, with players who pre-purchased the game getting first crack at it.  The open beta event begins in a little over three hours from the time of this post or at 3:00 pm EST.

For those who have not pre-purchased they game, they can participate in the open beta starting tomorrow at the same time and the event will last until Monday the 23rd to 3:00pm EST.

What makes this open beta event different from all the rest is that there will be no character whips afterward, so in essence this is the unofficial head-start for everyone. Players are however limited to level 38 for the beta until the game launches on April 28th in the head-start event, then on May 1st for everyone else.

See you on the battle field.

Since announcing the free Weekend Pass five weeks ago, BioWare has hosted three free weekends and has just announced the fourth, making this 4 out of the last 6 weekends. Actually calling them free “weekends” isn’t very accurate since each event lasts for three and a half days, so really they should be called “free half-weeks”, but I’m getting side-tracked.

It seems lately that EA and BioWare are throwing out a lot of free game-time. Aside from these free weekends, players also recently received 30 free days of game-time and additional friend passes to give out.  That’s a lot of free time and one wonders why they just aren’t making it a permanent free-trial instead of multiple free promotions that only last a few days.  I guess it’s a marketing thing, maybe some statistic shows you get more players by limiting the free trials instead, who knows.

Anyway the next Star Wars: The Old Republic free Weekend Pass  begin on Thursday, April 19th at 12:01AM CDT / 5:01AM GDT and run until Monday, April 23rd at 2:00AM CDT / 7:00AM GDT.