First off you're asking for the game to span almost 400 years....probably a bit too much. But one thing your point drives home: While PGI can "claim" to be changing Battletech TT due to an online FPS being different than TT.
They have no valid excuse for not including lore in their game.
I once saw a stat that there are well over a million printed words about BT history. That PGI has chosen to ignore this wealth of information is just laziness. They even hired Randall Bills as a consultant, his brief piece on the widowmaker was brilliant. Just let him write a short piece once a month to spark interest in this game. Hell Tina should run a weekly contest for players to present a short BT piece (say 3 paragraphs) about something in game relating it to lore. The winner gets 100k cbills and the story printed as a news item for that week. Call it a weekly Comstar update from the front...(For those who remember Battletechnology magazine)...
There is so much more that PGI could be doing relating MWO to the history of BT, that could spark interest in this game. Their failure in this aspect of BT is what will probably drive the old timers from this game. PGI will soon realize that people will get saturated with new mechs and their "packages" will stop selling. Then they will think it's time to "advance" the timeline, but new mechs means new weapons and more "balancing" with people (still) screaming that tier 1 cr4p still needs to be "viable" thus the new weapons will be nerfed into more of the same as we have now. (why use a RAC 5 over a AC 5 if it doesn't kill mechs faster). I don't see this path as having long term success. But if they could tap into the rich history of Battletech and give people a reason to play mechs or a reason to fight for a planet, they could sustain interest much better.
Stated bluntly, I did not buy a Marauder to own another 75 ton mech. I bought it because it was Grayson Carlyle's mech. I bought the Warhammer because it was on the cover of my BT game and I remember playing it many times in TT. If they ever release a Joanna Hellbringer (the mech she used on Twycross), or Mad Dog (used in her Falcon Guard days) or Summoner (the mech she killed Natasha Kerensky with) hero mech I will buy it immediately as she is easily my favorite BT character. That is the emotion that MWO should be trying to nurture in newer converts to BT.
I'll leave this bit from Robert Thurston (one of my favorite BT writers) here:
"To Joanna, the advance had neither strategic, aesthetic, nor emotional significance. Like an old-time foot-soldier, she was most concerned with the performance of duty. Were all the units in their proper places? Had the techs loaded all the ammo before leaving the camp on Prezno Plain? Had she forgotten something vital in the short training time she'd had to whip this misbegotten crew into shape?
She wondered why she could never lose this habit of thinking like a training officer. There were times when she felt that training was, finally, her specialty. The Bloodname she had never won, the minor battles she had fought, the hatred inspired in her by almost all other humans—none of it mattered when she was satisfied with her performance of duty.
Star Captain Joanna, who had never won her Bloodname, who now was among the aging warriors, could not know that among so many soldiers, she was the ideal Clan warrior. Clan military theorists as far back as Nicholas Kerensky himself would have admired her total dedication. On a battlefield she carried in no weight that could not in some way be used in the combat. Even her hatred, deep as it ran, was useful to the objectives of warfare. And in the entire Jade Falcon Clan few warriors could build up a killing growl like Joanna."
Falcon Guard, 1991, Robert Thurston
THAT is why I love Battletech.....
Edited by J0anna, 12 February 2016 - 09:13 AM.
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